China's central government Thursday urged more efforts to boost vegetable output, ensure market supply and to stabilize vegetable prices.

Both the market and the macro-control measures must be used to tackle the problems in big cities of sharp changes in vegetable price, the State Council, China's Cabinet, said Thursday in a statement on the government website www.gov.cn.

City mayors must shoulder the responsibility to ease pressures on vegetable supply, and local governments should take measures to boost self-sufficiency, the statement said.

It also urged more efforts to develop wholesale and retail vegetable markets, and asked local governments to map out programs to cope with possible emergencies in vegetable supply.

"Because of severe floods across China, vegetable output and supply has been stressed to some extent," the statement said.

Banks and other financial institutions were told to step up lending to vegetable production bases. Big cities were encouraged to set up output centers in key vegetable production bases.

(Xinhua News Agency September 3, 2010)