Soybean output set to increase

The government will ramp up soybean production and guide development of the soybean processing industry to reduce reliance on imports, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said yesterday.

Last year, China imported 30.82 million tons of soybeans, accounting for 40.9 percent of the world's total soybean trade and pushing up the country's dependence on imports to 78.7 percent, according to a guideline for the soybean processing industry released yesterday by the NDRC.

Analysts said this heavy dependence on imports made the domestic grain market more vulnerable to international pricing volatility and contributed to the country's high CPI this year.