BEIJING - China's top economic planner and ministries of commerce and finance said Tuesday the government would sell 100,000 tonnes of sugar from state reserves on July 6.

The stocked sugar was to be sold via public auction with the base price set at 4,000 yuan ($588.3 dollars) per tonne, said a statement posted on the website of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

This would be the sixth auction of state sugar reserves since December 2009. To stabilize prices, the government sold 1.22 million tones of reserve sugar between December 2009 and April 2010.

China's sugar market was likely to see short supplies in the second half of this year, given the current low stock levels at sugar mills and marketing areas, said Liu Hande, vice chairman of the China Sugar Association during a conference earlier this month.

He predicted that China's current sugar supply was 13.22 million tonnes in comparison with the consumption of 14 million tonnes, and this gap could be filled by taking advantage of the state reserve.