Based on the five-phase tax-inclusive quotation data, the scrapped and frame-returned retired photovoltaic modules have seen consecutive overall price declines for three weeks since May 26.

May 18: Market divergence emerged, with prices of older small-size modules rising, while large-size high-efficiency modules fell sharply.

May 26 (first round of price cuts): The market reversed, some older models led the decline, and the market officially entered a price-cutting cycle.

June 2 (second round of price cuts): All categories declined across the board, with the downward trend widening.

June 9 (third round of price cuts): All categories continued to decline, and prices have yet to stabilize.

June 16 (fourth round of price cuts): All categories accelerated their decline, with the downward trend widening significantly compared with the previous week, and some categories falling by more than 10%.

The prices currently disclosed in the market are all tax-inclusive reference prices. In the industry, there is still a large amount of off-grid cash transactions and untaxed gray-market dealings, but with the nationwide full implementation of recycled-resource tax compliance policies, the room for gray-market circulation in the industry is continuing to shrink and gradually being cleared out.

At present, many places across the country are vigorously promoting reverse invoicing, payment-before-invoice and other tax-compliance measures to standardize the transaction process for recycled resources. Taking Xingtai as an example, among the 124 resource recycling enterprises there, 88 have already started handling reverse invoicing, and a cumulative total of more than 46,000 individuals have issued nearly 500,000 invoices. The Xingtai Municipal Tax Service will continue to improve the tax risk monitoring and early-warning mechanism for reverse invoicing, track and analyze enterprise policy implementation, and leverage tax big-data analysis to invoice issuance trends to accurately solve bottlenecks and difficulties for enterprises, helping the resource recycling industry chain develop in a standardized and healthy way.

From a nationwide perspective, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the State Taxation Administration have signed a memorandum of cooperation to deepen information sharing and joint supervision. Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guizhou, Guangxi, Jiangsu and many other places have successively launched the “payment-before-invoice” model, covering the full range of recycled-resource recovery scenarios and, together with digital banking services, realizing a closed loop of transaction, payment, invoicing and tax payment. Even in the field of cooking oil waste recycling, which was once easily overlooked, Chongqing has also launched the “payment-before-invoice” service, realizing invoicing immediately upon transaction and full traceability, with the scope of compliant supervision continuing to expand. Starting in November, the refined oil retail industry will fully implement the transaction-immediate-invoice model, and it is expected that this regulatory mechanism will also be rapidly rolled out across the recycled-resource recovery sector.

Recently, the first smart recycling station in the Jinpu New Area of Dalian, integrating the two networks digitalized recycling station, has been put into use on Huaqing Road. Relying on the two-network integrated digital recycling station point,online full-process traceable transactions, with automatic reverse invoicing by the system after settlement, solve the problem of missing links in the industry. In the future, the two-network integrated smart recycling station is bound to become mainstream in the recycled-resource industry. Offline non-compliant recycling outlets featuring scattered operations, no-account and no-invoice transactions will be gradually rectified and phased out, and the industry will move faster toward standardized and centralized operations.

For a long time, China’s recycled-resource recycling industry has mainly been dominated by small workshops operating in a “scattered and mobile” manner. Problems such as non-transparent pricing, non-standard metering, mismatched transaction information, unclear flow, and rough handling methods are widespread in waste material recycling, making the industry’s pain points particularly prominent.Photovoltaic recycling is also facing the same issues. Rough dismantling and low-cost illegal operations are rampant, and even the phenomenon of “bad money driving out good” has appeared, exposing the deep-seated dilemma of regulatory gaps and disorderly transaction order in the industrial waste sector.

To improve this situation, in January 2026, nine departments including the Ministry of Commerce issued the Notice on Implementing the Green Consumption Promotion Action, which explicitly called for “promoting the construction of a nationally unified recycling service platform”;

Under this policy framework, Beijing, Henan, Hubei, and Hunan were among the first to respond, rapidly issuing policy drafts and innovative measures, all pointing to one key direction — accelerating the construction of a province-wide/ city-wide unified waste resource trading platform. At the same time, China Resources Circulation Group, as the “national team,” is also playing a leading role in the industry by taking “building industry-level digital platforms and tools” as a key task during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period. China’s circular economy is comprehensively upgrading from the traditional model to digitalization, platformization, and standardization.