December 11, 2008
China government to take measures to protect domestic soy
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, is studying measures to protect domestic soy.
According to the statistics by NDRC, the price of imported soy is about RMB900 per tonne cheaper than that of domestic soy, so most crushers choose to use imported soy.
The increasing reliance on imports has triggered off China's worries about grain and vegetable oil security.
To restrict imports of soy and solve the problem of sluggish sales of soy produced by north-east China, the country's major soy production base, NDRC has decided to take some measures to protect domestic soy, such as procuring locally at a protective price and offering subsidies to soy crushing enterprises.
However the concrete measures have not yet been decided yet. China's imports of soy have increased in recent years, from less than 2.5 million tonnes per year in the early 1990s to more than 10 million tonnes in 2000, half of which came from the US, according to industry and official statistics.
