China's State Council announced Wednesday further support policies, including expanded export credit insurance, tax breaks and more financial access, to help exporters.

An executive meeting of the State Council, or Cabinet, also said the country would keep the yuan "basically stable" at a "reasonable and balanced" level to help exporters avoid exchange risks.

The meeting was presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The government will provide 84 billion U.S. dollars worth of short-term export credit insurance to trading companies to help increase exports.

Preferential policies and tax breaks will mainly go to labor-intensive and high-tech industries to protect world market share.

Smaller companies would get more financing guarantees from financial institutions, as the government promised to allocate unspecified extra funding from the central budget.

Shrinking external demand that lead to export declines would remain "the biggest difficulty" facing the economy, participants to the meeting agreed.

They also called for coordinated efforts in expanding domestic demand and stabilizing exports, so as to reduce the impact of global financial crisis on China's foreign trade to the minimum.

China raised export rebates on some products after exports shrank on weakening overseas demand since the second half of 2008. For example, the government raised the tax rebate rate for textiles five times since August, most recently last month when the rate went from 15 percent to 16 percent.

(Xinhua News Agency May 28, 2009)