China's top economic planning agency said Thursday the country's commodity futures prices had declined since the government stepped up measures to battle inflation.

Data collected by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) showed average future prices of copper, zinc, rubber, cotton, plastics, soybean oil and sugar had fallen by more than 10 percent on Wednesday since Nov.11, the NDRC said in a statement on its website.

The statement said the fall was mainly a market response to a string of government measures to curb inflation.

The NDRC also attributed the fall to sluggish commodity future markets in Europe, the United States and Japan and profit-taking in the domestic market.

In another on-line statement posted Thursday, the NDRC urged local governments to cautiously handle price hikes of government-controlled commodities such as water, gas, power and oil, to alleviate economic pressures on enterprises and people.

The government has adopted various measures in the past week to boost agricultural production, increase supplies of farm produce and energy, and strengthen market supervision to combat price hikes, which saw the consumer price index (CPI) hit a 25-month high in October.

(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2010)