There will be no substantial shift in China's macroeconomic policy despite comments last week that might have suggested otherwise, said Ba Shusong, deputy director of the Institute of Financial Research at the Development Research Center, the Financial Times reported Friday.

The Development Research Center is a think tank under the State Council.

Last December, the Central Economic Work Conference stated that the economic goal for 2008 was to "prevent the economy from overheating and prevent the current structural inflation from turning into a broad-based one." Since then, the government has maintained a tight monetary policy.

However, the Communist Party's Political Bureau, China's top decision-maker, stated last week that maintaining fast and stable economic development and fighting rising inflation will be the two priorities for the economy in the second half of 2008.

The slightly different wording caused market doubts about whether the government would loosen its tight macroeconomic control.

Ba said the new wording only indicated a tiny adjustment to China's macroeconomic control policy and that the monetary policy will remain tight due to the long-term tendency of the current inflation.

However, some economic policies do need slight adjustment, Ba noted. He said money supply and credit control are one such example.

Since the capital situation of banks and capital demand of companies are constantly changing, Ba suggested the government give banks more of a say in credit supply.

He also called for further use of fiscal policy to support the country's ongoing economic transformation.

For more details, please read the full story in Chinese:

(http://www.p5w.net/today/200808/t1808689.htm)

(China.org.cn by Yan Pei August 1, 2008)