China will closely monitor prices in education, medicine and other sectors of particular concern to ordinary people, so as to keep prices of critical goods and services basically stable next year, said a senior government official.

Bi Jingquan, vice-minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said Thursday at a national meeting on price supervision and inspection that real estate prices, lawyers' fees and court charges, as well as agricultural fees and farm product prices, will all be closely supervised.

He said that government departments should pay close attention to price issues of concern to the general public, and take effective measures to ensure that government price reform measures are fully implemented.

In 2006, the NDRC began supervising agricultural goods prices, oil product prices, electricity prices, taxi charges and education fees.

In the first 11 months of 2006, over 65,000 price law infringement cases were handled, involving more than 2.4 billion yuan (300 million U.S.dollars) of illegal charges.

Source: Xinhua