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How will 'Two Sessions' set tune for China's economy?

Updated: 2012-03-05 13:45

(Xinhua)

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Controlling inflation

China has been fighting against inflation throughout last year. Its consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, grew by 5.4 percent year-on-year, higher than the 4 percent target set at the beginning of 2011.

To curb inflation, China has tightened its monetary policy, and the policy's lagged effect will continue to work into 2012. Besides, the drop of international bulk commodity prices may ease imported inflation pressure on China.

Economist, therefore, predicted that China’s CPI in 2012 will continue to ease.

The falling back of commodity prices will leave more room for reforming the country's energy and resource pricing system.

The Price Department with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced in late February that China will reform its energy and resource pricing system this year, but will time it to minimize impacts on consumer prices.

The government will focus such reforms on electricity, oil, natural gas and water this year, including introducing differential prices for residential power use and launching pilot pricing reforms for natural gas in Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Boosting real economy

The global financial crisis has let Western developed countries taste the bitterness of preferring virtual economy over real economy. Learning a painful lesson, they have put developing real economy back onto their agendas.

While in China, the closing down of many small firms and running away of bosses over debt solvency in east China's economically vibrant Zhejiang province last year also rang alarm bells for the hollow industries.

Chinese leaders called on the financial sector to serve the real economy during the National Financial Work Conference held in January.

Premier Wen Jiabao said, "In future, China will stick to the principle of having the financial industry serve the real economy to prevent virtual bubbles from inflating the economy."

Wen also said that the government this year will further support small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and push forward reform of monopoly industries at a meeting to solicit opinions on the draft of the government work report.

He said that private capital should be encouraged to flow to fields such as finance, energy, transport and social services, and detailed policies must be drawn up within the first half of this year.

Economist Lai Weimin said that only if the monopoly fields are open to private capital, it is possible to draw social capital into real economy.

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