2010-11-18 09:02

BEIJING - China will auction 200,000 tons of reserve sugar on Nov 22 in a bid to guarantee market supplies and curb price rises, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced Wednesday in a notice on its website.

The reserve sugar will be sold to Chinese food processing companies at a base price of 4,000 yuan ($597) per ton, said the notice.

This is the second such auction during the 2010-2011 processing season. The government sold 210,000 tons of sugar from the state reserves on Oct 22. The hammer price averaged 6,680.56 yuan per ton.

Sugar prices have risen to more than 6,000 yuan per ton from 2,800 yuan per ton in October 2008.

In south China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the country's largest sugar producing area, prices recorded a new high of 7,600 yuan per ton on Nov 8, up 74.7 percent from the same period of the 2009-2010 season.

China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, soared to a 25-month high of 4.4 percent year-on- year in October.

Premier Wen Jiabao has said the government was considering price control policies, according to a report on the central government's website.