On August 26, Assistant Minister Fang Aiqing was present at the Videophone Joint Conference on the Anhui Rural Commodity Circulation Reform and Market Construction Provincial-ministerial Pilot Projects and Summary, and called for further strengthening of the construction work of the rural market system. Assistant Provincial Governor Shao Guohe was also present and addressed at the conference.  

    Anhui Province is a pilot province for rural commodity circulation reform and market construction, jointly determined by MOFCOM and Anhui Provincial People’s Government in 2005. Sine then, a total of 290 rural commodity distribution centers, 17,000 farmer chain stores, 50 provincial-level key agricultural products wholesale markets, 30 green agricultural products wholesale market, 44 agricultural exports demonstration bases have been built, and five state-level large-scale agricultural products wholesale markets and four state-level large-scale agricultural products circulation enterprises have been established in the said Province. With the building of the rural market system continuously advanced, rural consumption in Anhui Province continued to expand, and farmers’ income continued to increase. In 2007, the total retail sales of the social consumer goods in the rural market of Anhui Province reached 107.87 billion yuan, up 16.8% year on year, with an increase of 6.5 percentage points compared with that of 2005, and the increase gap between the urban and rural market has reduced to 3 percentage points from the 5.7 percentage points in 2005.The per capita income of farmers amounted to 2,499 yuan, up 42.3% compared with that in the end of 2004.

   Fang pointed out that remarkable achievements have been made in the pilot work of commodities circulation reform and market construction in the rural areas of Anhui Province the Anhui Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government have attached great importance to the project, and the Provincial Commercial Department and other departments concerned have made great efforts. The provincial modern circulation system for daily consumer goods and agricultural producer goods chain networks have been initially built, the upgrading of agricultural products circulation facilities and standardization and industrialization construction for agricultural exports are continuously accelerating, and the construction of rural commercial information service system has been gradually strengthened.

   Fang expressed that although the three-year pilot project has already been concluded, the rural circulation work still has a long way to go. He hoped that based on the three-year pilot project experience, Anhui Province shall further speed up the construction of modern circulation system in the rural areas, and make new contributions to the overall urban and rural development and promoting the construction of new socialist rural areas.