MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

China promises “healthy and stable” economic development in 2011

The Central Economic Work Conference is China’s most important economic policy making event

China will enhance and improve macro-economic regulation to ensure stable and healthy economic development in 2011, said a statement released Sunday in Beijing after the annual Central Economic Work Conference.

Next year's macro-regulation should basically be “proactive, stable, prudent and flexible”, the statement said.

The focus will be better handling the relationship between stable and relatively fast economic development, economic restructuring and inflation expectations in an active and stable way, it said.

Participants at the three-day conference, one of China's most important economic-policy-making events, agreed to exert more efforts to keep prices stable next year.

They also agreed to accelerate the strategic transformation of the economic development pattern in order to make economic development more coordinated, sustainable and reliant on the domestic economy.

China's economy grew 9.6% year on year in the third quarter this year, slowing from the 10.3% increase in the second quarter and 11.9% surge in the first quarter.

Inflation picked up to a 28-month high of 5.1% in November, as bank lending looked certain to exceed the 7.5-trillion-Yuan full-year target the government set at the start of the year.

The meeting reaffirmed to boost farm produce supply through the development of modern agriculture in 2011, and clamp down on price speculation which is largely blamed for hiking prices.

The statement said the country will mainly employ economic and legal means, with administrative measures used when necessary, to keep the overall prices “basically stable”.

On Dec. 3, China said it will shift its monetary policy stance in 2011 to “prudent” from “relatively loose.”

“Credit should go to the real economy, especially the agricultural sector and small business,” the statement said.

The meeting reaffirmed the continuation of the government's proactive fiscal policy.

Gao Peiyong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said a combination of proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy underscore the complications of the current economic situation.

“Macro-regulation has various goals. One is preventing the economy being affected by the global financial crisis. Another is curbing inflation. The situation is more complicated than before,” he said.