Central bank governor stresses price stability

China's central bank governor Yi Gang on Friday underlined the importance of grain production and energy supply for ensuring price stability amid rising inflationary pressure worldwide.

"Price stability is our policy priority," Yi said, adding that agricultural production and the production and import of key energies - such as coal, oil and gas - are the focus of financial services.

"As long as grain production and energy supply remain stable, inflation will be kept within a reasonable range," Yi said while delivering a keynote speech at a session organized by Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022. The session was titled "Global Inflation, Interest Rate Hikes and Economic Stability".

Yi said the People's Bank of China, the nation's central bank, will maintain an accommodative monetary policy throughout this year to support the real economy and is ready to support small and medium-sized enterprises with more instruments if needed.

With monetary policy focusing on smaller businesses and vulnerable groups hit by COVID-19, the balance of inclusive lending to small and micro businesses grew 25 percent year-on-year to 21 trillion yuan ($3.25 trillion) as of the end of March, according to him.

Yi added the Carbon Emission Reduction Facility, a targeted monetary tool to support carbon reduction, had enabled the financial institutions to lend out 230 billion yuan to qualified carbon reduction programs and led to an annual reduction equivalent to over 40 million tons of carbon dioxide emission as of the end of February.