China will maintain a balanced supply of grain this year, taking into consideration both grain storage and import, said the Ministry of Commerce.

The ministry predicted that the overall grain output in China will be a little higher than last year. China harvested 469.4 million tons of grain last year.

Latest statistics shows that China's summer grain output reached 106.27 million tons, up 5.1 percent over last year. Meanwhile, China is expecting a good harvest of early rice. The growing area of autumn grain has also increased, said the ministry.

The ministry said in the second half of this year, the domestic grain price will maintain stable or go down slightly. In the meantime, the growth rate of import of grain will decrease by a large margin.

In the first half of this year, China imported 4.36 million tons of grain, up 6.2 percent over the same period last year. In the same period last year, the year-on-year growth rate of grain import was 176 percent.

The ministry also said the price of vegetable oil will go down in the second half of this year, because of overcapacity of oil processing companies. But the price increase of vegetable market will be higher than that in 2004.

Source: Xinhua