China plans to earmark 152.1 billion yuan (about 21 billion US dollars) in agriculture-related fixed assets investment from its central budget this year.

The move is part of efforts to shore up agricultural development plagued by surging inflationary pressure and the persisting snow disaster, a senior official said on Wednesday.

Du Ying, deputy minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, which is in charge of planning or approval of major investment projects, said the figure represented an increase of 21.7 billion yuan over 2007, up 16.6 percent.

He said the fund was expected to help remedy the hard-hit agriculture production and secure farmers' incomes against the rising inflationary pressure.

Early next month, the final central budget arrangement will be approved by the country's top legislative body.

The central government plans to put nearly 74 billion yuan, or 49 percent of the total, into rural infrastructure upgrading, an increase of 21.7 billion yuan from a year ago, Du said in an interview with Xinhua.

The commission plans to invest 7 billion yuan in safe drinking water projects to benefit 32.05 million rural residents, he said.

The country will also spend 20.3 billion yuan to expand rural roads in the country's western and central areas and in parts of the eastern regions. Some 2.9 billion yuan will be used to renovate power grids and improve hydropower supply in the power-strained western rural regions.

Du said another 44.3 billion yuan will go to improve living and farming conditions in rural areas, 7.55 billion yuan more than last year and up 20 percent.

The money will finance the building of large grain production bases, major irrigation projects and the reinforcement of risk-prone reservoirs.

The commission has pledged three billion yuan to provide 2.5 million rural households with access to methane, which provides relatively clean energy, he said.

Spending on rural education and cultural facilities was also included in the plan, but no details were given.

Du said fertilizer prices were rising constantly with prices of carbamide, a commonly used fertilizer up to 1,955 yuan per ton, 10 percent more than a year ago. The cost of diammonium hydrogen phosphate (DHP), another widely-used fertilizer, was up 50 percent from a year ago to 4,300 yuan per ton.

To offset the surging costs, the State Council has pledged to lift the subsidy for each mu of rice paddy by 13 yuan from the average 27 yuan last year.

The NDRC has also pressed fertilizer producers to increase output to keep prices stable. The price for DHP should be no more than 4,100 yuan a ton during the spring plowing period, one of the two major planting seasons starting in late February and ending in late April.

China's consumer price index (CPI) hit an 11-year high of 7.1 percent in January. Food prices surged 18.2 percent in January, with grain prices up 5.7 percent.

Pork prices, which had been cited as the major factor driving up the CPI in the second half of 2007, soared 58.8 percent in January.

Since food has a weighting of 32.74 percent in the CPI, the stable supply of such commodities, farm produce in particular, will be a decisive factor behind China's efforts to beat inflationary pressures.

A slew of measures have been adopted to secure farmer's income including the latest increase of the minimum purchasing price for wheat and rice early this month.

In the "No.1 Document" published last month, the government promised to greatly increase investment in rural areas this year to promote agriculture, the rural economy and to improve the lives of the country's hundreds of million rural residents.

(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2008)