China's Farm Produce Prices Down

The price of pork fell 1.2 per cent and beef was down 0.4 per cent.

The price of eggs continued to drop for a third week as supplies increased. The egg price was down 0.4 per cent from the previous week, and down 0.9 per cent in the past three weeks.

Eight kinds of sea products also saw an average price drop of 0.5 per cent.

Prices of rice and edible oil rose slightly, both up 0.2 per cent.

The general price decline of farm products is further decreasing the pressure on inflation, which began easing in July.

The country's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, climbed 6.1 per cent year-on-year in September from 6.2 per cent in August and 6.5 per cent in July, which was a 37-month high.

Despite the eases, inflation remains stubbornly high - far exceeding the government's full-year target of 4 per cent for 2011.

Sheng Laiyun, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said that the likelihood of CPI growth further dropping in the fourth quarter was very high.

The government has made controlling consumer prices a top priority this year by tightening monetary policies which included raising the benchmark interest rates three times and hiking banks' reserve requirement ratio six times since the start of the year.

NBS data showed that the economy expanded 9.1 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter, the slowest pace in two years.

The slowing economic growth and tight monetary polices all pointed to an inflation decrease, Mr Laiyun said at a press conference Tuesday in Beijing.

He said that a bumper harvest this year and declining international commodity prices would also ease price pressure in the coming months.