中国气候变化信息网 China Climate Change Info-Net

Aerial photo taken on July 5, 2018 shows the scenery of the Erhai Lake in Dali, southwest China's Yunnan Province. The forest coverage in Yunnan has reached 60.3 percent, and the province is known as "Animal Kingdom" and "Plant Kingdom."(Xinhua/Hu Chao)

"China is an important country, not just in the global economy, but also in the fight against climate change," an IMF official says.

 A senior official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has commended China for its role in joint global actions to tackle climate change,

"China is an important country, not just in the global economy, but also in the fight against climate change," Paolo Mauro, deputy director in the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department, told Xinhua last week on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.

"It has the ability to bring other big players to the table and come up with some agreement on joint actions," Mauro said.

China is taking action to curb climate change with "many success stories," said the official, referring to China as "one of the reasons why the price of solar energy has declined so much."

Mauro made the remarks after the IMF called for implementing fiscal policies to mitigate climate change in its flagship Fiscal Monitor report released on Oct. 16.

"I think there's increasing concern about climate change. We felt we had a lot of analytical work that could inform policy-makers," Mauro said, adding that he believes fiscal policy is possibly "the most important policy lever" to reduce carbon emissions.

The IMF report suggested finance ministers around the world should reshape the tax system and fiscal policies to encourage people and firms to transition away from coal and other polluting fossil fuels.

"There are a lot of choices that governments can make. I think they basically have to figure out what is the package of measures that makes the transition feasible, politically fair and economically efficient," Mauro said.