Chinese officials said on Thursday the government is determined
to crackdown on illegal pricing and is confident of winning the
battle.
Cao Changqing, director of the Pricing Department of the
National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said the
government was confident it could successfully curb illegal
pricing, including overly fast increases in prices, with measures
to boost supply and control prices.
"The pricing authorities are boosting market monitoring and
checkups nationwide. They will clamp down mercilessly on illegal
pricing cases once found," Cao told Xinhua.
The government recently had undertaken a series of measures to
prevent inflation.
It announced on Wednesday temporary price interventions in a
package of products, including grain, edible oil, meat, milk, eggs
and liquefied natural gas (LNG). On Sunday, it nearly tripled the
maximum fine for illegal pricing to one million yuan (137,800 U.S.
dollars).
A recent clampdown on illegal pricing had also helped to bring
down LNG retail prices by up to 19 percent in major Chinese cities,
the NDRC said on Tuesday.
"The pricing interventions aim to prevent unreasonable price
increases in daily necessities and reduce people's living costs,"
said Zhou Wangjun, the Pricing Department deputy director.
In spite of all the measures, prices will continue to rise for
some time before the shortage in agricultural products, the main
culprit for high inflation, was greatly eased, Cao admitted.
"We will not intervene if the company's price hikes are
reasonable. However, we allow no illegal and unreasonable price
rises."
Zhou added, "The government has not asked and will not ask
companies to run business while making losses." He said the pricing
interventions only involved a small number of companies and goods
and that would not affect the market's role in setting prices for
the majority of goods.
The government had taken measures to stabilize prices of
production materials, electricity and fuel to prevent overly-high
growth in production costs.
(Xinhua News Agency January 18, 2008)
