KEY POINTS:
China's central bank will fight soaring inflation by further tightening monetary policy, but it will do so cautiously to ensure stable economic growth, a senior central banker saidyesterday.
Beijing late last year shifted its monetary stance from "prudent" to "tight" to curb consumer inflation, which scaled an 11-year high of 6.9 per cent in November.
"We will unwaveringly fight against inflation and implement a tightening policy. But we will make sound arrangements to ensure fairly stable economic growth," Yi Gang, a newly promoted vice-governor of the People's Bank of China, told a financial forum.
China raised interest rates six times last year and ordered banks on 10 occasions to set aside more deposits in reserve to cool an economy that grew 11.5 per cent in the first nine months of 2007 compared with a year earlier.
- REUTERS
