The government must strengthen macro-economic control and carefully handle the relationship between maintaining steady and relatively fast economic development, adjusting economic structure and managing inflation expectations in a bid to create favorable conditions to transform the development mode, he said.

The government would stick to the policy of expanding domestic demand this year to boost public consumption and optimize the investment structure, he said.

Wen said the country should make "substantial progress" in transforming the economic development mode by continuing to push forward renovation of key industries, fostering strategic emerging industries, promoting accelerated development of the service sector, and improving the overall quality and competitiveness of the national economy.

The government would comprehensively implement its strategy of reinvigorating the country through science, education and expertise, and enhance its efforts to turn China into an innovation-oriented country so as to give technological and personnel support for the transformation of the development mode, he said.

The government should also make efforts to improve the people's living standards and deepen reforms of "key fields" to establish a system which was conducive to the transformation, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2010)