China's top economic planner said on Friday that the country released 8.5 million tons of State-reserved grain and cooking oil from Nov 23 to 26 to ensure market supply meets the demand and to stabilize prices.

A total of 25.5 million tons of State-stockpiled grain and cooking oil had been released on the market since the end of October, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement on its website.

These stockpiles included 5.4 million tons of corn, 13.5 million tons of wheat, 6.3 million tons of rice and 300,000 tons of rapeseed oil, the NDRC said.

With the consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, experiencing a 25-month high of 4.4 percent in October, China has been striving to ease commodity price increases and withdraw liquidity.

The Chinese government has also been trying to boost agricultural production, increase supplies of farm produce and energy and crack down on speculation. It also said it would enforce price control when it was necessary.

Also, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, raised benchmark interest rates and hiked the reserve requirement ratio for banks twice in a month.

(Xinhua News Agency November 27, 2010)