Premier Li specifies govt tasks for 2013

BEIJING - Premier Li Keqiang specified key tasks for the government to accomplish this year on Wednesday.

A total of 48 key tasks in six categories were declared and distributed to corresponding departments at an executive cabinet meeting chaired by Li.

All departments should closely follow and analyze economic situations at home and abroad in a bid to stabilize growth, fight inflation, guard against risks and boost China's economic transition, according to the meeting.

More efforts should be made to facilitate rural growth and ensure plentiful harvests, while long-term urbanization layouts should be mapped out with better accessory policies, according to the meeting. Industrial restructuring should also pick up speed and different sectors should propose concrete methods to tackle production overcapacity.

Fiscal and taxation reforms should follow programs in a gradual way. Financial reforms will demand new measures to boost the marketization of interest rates and foreign exchange rates, as well as to develop multi-layer capital markets, according to the meeting.

The key for price reforms will be to upgrade the pricing mechanism for resource products. And ensuring and improving people's livelihoods is the initiative and goal of the government.

New jobs must be added by stabilizing economic growth and adjusting economic structures, while the key to improving social security will be to tackle problems faced by disadvantaged groups, according to the meeting.

Market controls for the property sector should be maintained and improved, while a long-term mechanism should be built to ensure the sector's stable and healthy growth.

Oversight systems must be upgraded for better food, drug and production safety, while special measures should be taken in key regions to fight pollution of the air, water and soil.

Fairness is a source of social creativity and more efforts should accordingly be made to achieve equality in education and job markets in order to ensure vertical mobility, according to the meeting.

Education departments should make good use of the country's 2 trillion yuan ($318.98 billion) education budget this year.

In addition, the admission threshold for the non-governmental investment market should be lowered, according to the meeting.