An expert with the State Council predicted here Tuesday that China's grain price will keep stable in the short-term, but he preferred not to make estimation for the far future.

In an interview with Xinhua, Xu Xiaoqing, deputy director of the agricultural economy research institute in the Development Research Center under the State Council (DRC), said that supply and demand are the primary factors that determine the grain price.

Due to the increase of grain output last year, the market has more grain supply which would be reflected in price changes, Xu said.

In some rice bases, the area of growing rice is increasing and the grain price has seen a slight drop.

However, as the climate this year is not as good as last year, the grain output might be affected and is hard to estimate, Xu said.

Statistics from the National Statistics Bureau (NBS) show that the grain output for the summer season rose 5.1 percent over the same period last year.

In the second quarter of 2005, China's grain price fell for the first time in recent years, according to NBS statistics.

Source: Xinhua