Shanghai Daily: Business - shanghaidaily.com
IN the wake of escalating inflation, China pledged to draw up a series of measures, including more subsidies for farmers, to secure a stable supply of produce next year when Beijing hosts the Olympics. The message was delivered at the annual central rural work conference in the capital. The two-day conference, which ended yesterday, outlined the top priorities in the country's rural areas. Preventing shortages of farm produce and avoiding extreme fluctuations in price would be a top priority, a document released after the conference said. Huge rises in the price of grain, pork and cooking oil late in the year should have raised the income of farmers. However, it also lifted the nation's consumer price index to an 11-year high of 6.9 percent in November, well above the government-set three percent target. The central government has decided that "to prevent current price increases from becoming evident inflation" would be a primary task of the macroeconomic control in