China targets 4% rise in 2011 consumer prices
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China aims to keep its consumer price rise at around 4 percent this year, says a government work report to be delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the parliament' s annual session Saturday.
"Recently, prices have risen fairly quickly and inflation expectations have increased. This problem concerns the people' s wellbeing, bears on overall interests and affects social stability," reads the report, distributed to the public media before the opening of the Fourth Session of the 11th National People' s Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature.
"We must therefore make it our top priority in macroeconomic control to keep overall price levels stable," it says.
To keep price rise in check, the government will make the most of the favorable conditions, such as the oversupply of major industrial products, ample grain reserves and abundant foreign exchange reserves, the report says.
Economic and legal methods as well as administrative ones, when necessary, will be employed to intensify price regulation and monitoring, it says.
China' s consumer price index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, remained stubbornly high in January, rising 4.9 percent from a year earlier. CPI increased 3.3 percent in 2010, exceeding the government's s 3-percent target.
