The State Development Planning Commission's vice-minister Wang Yang said price regulating departments at all levels should act decisively to investigate and deal with price violations concerning rural water and electricity services, housing construction and farm machinery repairs to reduce the financial burden on farmers and promote rural economic growth.

Wang made the call at a national price supervision and inspection conference in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province, over the weekend. Wang's commission is authorized by the central government to supervise operation of the country's pricing mechanisms.

Most prices of goods and services are decided by market forces and only a few, such as water and electricity, which are essential to daily life, are guided or decided by the government.

Efforts should also be made this year to deal with over-pricing of commodities and services in cases where departments have no statutory powers to set prices, Wang noted.

Wang's commission would directly investigate price violations relating to education, urban water supply and charges for migrant workers.

He also called on local price regulating departments to closely monitor fees charged for power supply, employment and re-employment, real estate, medical, drug and environmental protection services, among others.

Wang said his commission and its provincial branches have done a good job in pricing supervision.

Statistics released at the conference indicate that a total of 120,400 cases of price violations were investigated in China from January to November last year. The investigations recovered 2.17 billion yuan (US$261 million) in total -- 1.05 billion yuan (US$126 million) in consumer savings and 1.12 billion yuan (US$135 million) in State tax revenue.

Wang said last year's price supervision was mainly focused on consumer price and fee charging problems such as medical-related price surveillance.

The surveillance project, which involved 20,000 people and 30,000 medical units, uncovered 1.3 billion yuan (US$156 million) of irregular, unlawful interest gains which led to penalties for price violations.

Investigations into grain prices, key project construction fees, primary and middle school fee collection, finished oil prices, train ticket prices and other fees are being carried out by the departments concerned.

(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2003)