China will introduce more tax and administrative measures to slow its growing steel exports following the latest cut in export tax breaks, a government official said Tuesday.

They may include cutting tax rebates further, levying export tariffs on some products and raising the threshold for exporters to enter the industry, said Hu Chunli, director of the industry development research institute under the National Development and Reform Commission.

China has cut export tax rebates from 8 percent to 5 percent on 76 products and abolished rebates on 83 products since Sunday, in the sixth steel rebate adjustment since late 2003. Export taxes have also been imposed on some steel products.

China became a net steel exporter for the first time last year after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, with exports more than doubled from 2005. Exports have continued to more than double in the first quarter.

The exports add pressure on China's swelling trade surplus and has led to an increasing number of trade frictions. Since 2006, Chinese steel mills have been investigated for anti-dumping or anti-subsidy charges in 27 cases in 11 countries.

"The rebate cut is only a tool to meet the emergency and couldn't solve the problem entirely," Hu told a seminar in Shanghai organized by industry publication Steel Business Briefing. "To tackle this, we must adopt more long-term policies."

China has been curbing loans to mills and closing small plants to cope with an industry overcapacity, but current administrative policies are not enough to slow the export surge which has been fueled by a price gap between the home and international markets, Hu said.

But closing mills is always tough to implement as plants are usually protected by provincial governments which see them as one of their main sources of tax revenue.

But Charles Blum, president of U.S.-based International Advisory Services Group, is optimistic, saying China will "sooner or later" be able to effectively close its inefficient and polluting steel producing capacity.

He added China needs some reorientation of its policies to foster real consolidation and real competition in the industry.