Bumper harvests lift farm incomes

(China Daily/Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-12-29 07:35

Farmers' annual per-capita net income is expected to rise to 4,700 yuan ($687) this year, up 8 percent from a year ago.

The estimation was revealed at yesterday's annual central rural work conference, in which top leaders mapped out policies partly aimed at helping unemployed migrant workers returning to rural areas.

It will be the fifth consecutive year that Chinese farmers' annual income grew by more than 6 percent.

The lift in farmers' incomes came after bumper harvests in 2008, in which China may have yielded a record 528.2 million tons of grain. The record crops represent five years of consecutive grain output growth, Minister of Agriculture Sun Zhengcai said at the conference.

The yield was 26.9 million tons, or 5.4 percent higher than last year.

Farmers' income and livelihood are expected to be further boosted next year, as central leaders outlined a slew of new measures to spur production and create work for jobless migrant workers returning home.

They include:

Building cotton production bases in the Yangtze River valley and Huaihe and Haihe plains;

Employing as many migrant rural workers as possible to work on infrastructure construction projects, in both urban and rural areas;

Giving migrant workers priority for additional public service jobs;

Encouraging migrant workers to start their own businesses. They will be given credit extensions, tax breaks, free business registration and professional counseling;

Giving priority to projects that improve water, power and gas supplies as well as those which provide better roads and housing;

Ensuing safe drinking water to an additional 60 million rural residents.

Shrinking overseas demand for Chinese products forced companies to cut or stop production, driving migrant workers back to their hometowns earlier than usual this year.

About 10 million of China's 200 million migrant workers have returned to their homes jobless, statistics from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security revealed.

Poverty line raised

The government said on Saturday it would expand coverage of its anti-poverty program in rural areas next year to include an additional 28.41 million residents.

Fan Xiaojian, director of the Office for Poverty Alleviation and Development under the State Council, said rural residents with an annual per capita income of less than 1,067 yuan would begin to be covered in the country's poverty-relief program next year.

Currently, the program only benefited rural residents with an annual per capita income of less than 786 yuan.

China defines an annual income of less than 786 yuan as absolute poverty and an annual income of between 786 and 1,067 yuan as low income.

By the end of last year, the country had a rural population of 14.79 million living in absolute poverty while the low-income rural population was 28.41 million.