Some rural pupils in the hinterland of Ningxia’s Guyuan City will receive a subsidized lunch at 4 yuan (US$0.62) from this autumn semester, Ningxia's governor Wang Zhengwei said.

Wang said the 4 yuan will be wholly spent on food ingredients, excluding labor cost and utility bills.

The central government decided to launch the subsidized lunch project for pupils in poverty-stricken rural areas in China from the autumn semester this year. Ningxia was listed among the first batch of provinces to carry on the project as a trial.

The region nailed down an implementation schedule in a regular meeting led by the governor on June 23.

According to the schedule, the project will start in some of the rural primary schools in nine counties of Guyuan City this autumn semester and will be extended to cover all the primary schools in those counties by the spring semester of 2012.