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Official Calls on Effort for Rural Development
Qi Jingfa, vice-minister of agriculture called for efforts of local governments to spur rural economic development at a national township and village enterprises'conference held Friday in Beijing.
It is the local governments' obligation to divert more surplus laborers to township and village enterprises, and enterprises run by farmers or groups of farmers, which have been proved to be the country's main generators of income for farmers, Saturday's China Daily quoted the official as saying.
He said that the central government should also continue to push forward its enterprise restructuring and ownership reform to improve the competitiveness of such enterprises.
"The country has reached a historical turning point in agricultural productivity since it balanced out and then went into surplus between 1995 and 2000, and the slow increase in farmers' incomes has become a big problem," Qi said.
He urged local governments to place more emphasis on the importance of resolving this problem and making it a major task for the coming years.
Official statistics show that the average net income for farmers had mainly been earned from township and village enterprises in recent years.
In 1996, 29.9 percent of the average net income per capita for farmers was channeled from such enterprises, while in 1999 the rate had increased by roughly four percentage points.
Rural areas should actively and steadily boost the urbanization process and speed up the restructuring of township enterprises.
"We will vigorously work for the steady development of small cities and towns and promote restructuring and technical updating in township and village enterprises," said the official.
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