金融英语阅读：Govt mulls ways to control prices
China may impose temporary price controls if the fastest inflation in two years continues its current pace, the government vowed.Experts say the administrative measure, seldom employed in the past two decades after China ended its government pricing system used in the planned economy, would be the most effective tool to clamp down on speculative demand.
The State Council, or cabinet, said it would aim to increase the supply of com-modities, especially food, while urging local governments to offer temporary subsidies for low-income earners.
Price caps on "important daily necessities and production materials" will be used if necessary, it said in a statement Wednesday after a meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.
A commentary in Thursday's Chongqing Business Daily said it is the strongest signal the government is determined to launch an anti-inflation campaign employing various measures.
Consumer inflation surged to a 25-month high in October, with prices rising 4.4 percent from a year earlier. Food, which makes up about a third of China's consumer price index, led the way, climbing 10.1 percent, with vegetables rising 31 percent.
The surging costs led to the appearance of terms such as "vegetable slave."
"Go to Hong Kong to buy soy sauce" also became a popular phrase on the Internet, indicating the cost of daily commodities in the mainland had surpassed that in Hong Kong.
Yuan Gangming, director of the Macroeconomic Research Center at the Economics Insti-tute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that price control is an efficient measure, as the current round of inflation is mainly caused by speculation on agricultural products, and is hard to curb through regular means as it is in the real estate market.
China first used price controls at the end of 1993, when inflation that year hit 13.2 percent. The last time the government resorted to the measure was January 2008, when it temporarily froze prices for oil products, natural gas and electricity, as well as daily goods, to counter inflation that hit 8.5 percent in April that year.
Yuan suggested that if vegetable prices doubled between November and the end of the year, it would be the right time to cap prices. "If inflation is out of control, the whole economy would be in danger of breaking down," Yuan warned.
It is just the first step to keeping food prices under control in the campaign against inflation, Yuan said. "The real challenge for the government is to curb property prices, which can represent its ability to deal with important issues," he added.
页:
[1]