China will auction 200,000 tonnes of reserve sugar on November 22 in a bid to guarantee market supplies and curb price rises, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced Wednesday in a notice on its website.

The reserve sugar will be sold to Chinese food processing companies at a base price of 4,000 yuan (US$597) per tonne, said the notice.

This is the second such auction during the 2010-2011 processing season. The government sold 210,000 tonnes of sugar from the state reserves on October 22. The hammer price averaged 6,680.56 yuan per tonne. Sugar prices have risen to more than 6,000 yuan per tonne from 2,800 yuan per tonne in October 2008.

In south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the country's largest sugar producing area, prices recorded a new high of 7,600 yuan per tonne on November 8, up 74.7 percent from the same period of the 2009-2010 season.

China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, soared to a 25-month high of 4.4 percent year on year in October.

Premier Wen Jiabao has said the government was considering price control policies, according to a report on the central government's website.

(Xinhua News Agency November 18, 2010)