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China metals industry said Y2K bug free

SHANGHAI: China's major metal mines, smelters and refineries entered the new year without glitches from Y2K computer problems, an official said on Monday.

A special task force coordinating three major metals group companies in conjunction with the State Bureau of Nonferrous Metals Industries had received reports from more than 120 companies that none had been affected by the computer problems as the 2000 dawned, the official said.

"So far as we can tell all the operations are running normally," he said.

The official credited the smooth transition to extensive work in making plants Y2K compliant, making sure no malfunction would result if computers misread 2000 as 1900.

"We just began tallying the cost, which ranges from one million yuan ($120,000) to 10 million yuan at member companies," he said.

Plant managers have been made personally responsible for negligence if state assets suffer damages due to Y2K problems, officials at smelters have said.

In an industry wide restructuring in August, China's state-owned non-ferrous metals mines, smelters, refineries and research institutes were grouped into China Aluminium Corp, China Copper Lead Zinc Corp and China Rare Metals and Rare Earth Corp.-Reuters