An auction of 210,000 tons of China's sugar reserve will begin on Oct 22, in a bid to curb soaring prices, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced Monday in a notice on its website.

The reserve sugar would be sold to Chinese food producers to meet increasing demand, said the notice.

Bad weather has lowered expectations for food commodity production this year, raising prices. Sugar futures have been high since May.

In South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the country's major sugar producing area, sugar prices hit a record 6,000 yuan RMB per ton (US$902.3) on Oct 11.

Due to tight world supplies, sugar futures hit an eight-month high of 683.20 pounds a ton in London on Oct 15.

Eight batches of reserve sugar, a total of 1.71 million tons, were auctioned from October 2009 to September 2010, according to the MOC.

(China Daily October 19, 2010)