2010-12-10 10:17

BEIJING - China's top economic planner said Thursday that prices for agricultural produce and materials continued to fall from Nov 29 to Dec 5, with some varieties seeing big drops.

Food prices monitored in 36 major cities fell 0.2 percent from the previous week, said the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Vegetable prices fell the most, with wholesale prices dropping for the fourth consecutive week and 16 out of 18 staple vegetables falling in price from early November, it said.

Radish prices went down 32 percent, Chinese cabbage 28.6 percent, and rape 27.3 percent.

Prices of lettuces, cucumbers, celery, cabbages and eggplants all dropped by more than 20 percent.

Meanwhile, vegetable prices in 18 of the 36 cities were down by more than 15 percent on a monthly basis, said the NDRC.

Prices in Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China's Gansu province, went down 35.8 percent, those in Xiamen, Southeast China's Fujian province, fell 31.9 percent, and in Haikou, capital of Hainan province in South China, prices dropped 27.2 percent.

Also, prices in eight cities, including Shenyang, Shenzhen and Ningbo, were all down by more than 20 percent.

Prices of production materials fell for a third consecutive week, according to the NDRC.

Compared with the previous week, prices of major production materials fell 0.4 percent, up 0.3 percentage points.

Urea prices moved down 1.5 percent week-on-week, while natural gas prices dropped 1.3 percent week-on-week. Prices of aluminum fell 0.8 percent, and those of rubber were down by 0.2 percent.

Official figures showed that the country's grain output rose 2.9 percent year-on-year in 2010 to 546.4 million tons, marking the seventh consecutive year of growth for China's grain output.

Food prices account for about a third of the weight of China's consumer price index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, and the falling prices in farm produce and production materials are expected to ease some inflationary pressure.

China's CPI rose to a 25-month high of 4.4 percent year-on-year in October and the hike was largely attributed to a 10.1 percent surge in food prices.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said it would release the November CPI figures on Saturday.