Crop farmers receive one-off 20b yuan subsidy to offset price hikes

China's central government has delivered a one-off subsidy of 20 billion yuan ($3.098 billion) to crop-growing farmers as a measure to offset the loss of income due to price hikes for farming materials, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Finance on Wednesday.

The funds are part of the central government's budgetary expenditure of cultivated land productivity protection subsidy, which originally planned as much as 120.485 billion yuan this year.

Adding the one-off subsidy, total funds for the cultivated land productivity protection subsidy have increased by 16.6 percent, the ministry said.

The subsidy will help to stabilize crop-growing farmers' incomes and keep them motivated, the statement said.

The Ministry of Finance requires optimizing the procedure and methods of delivering the subsidy funds, taking advantage of information technology to make sure the funds will be received to the targeted group.

The basic data of the existing subsidy, agricultural insurance data, and farmers' identity information will be used to identify those who can receive the subsidy, the ministry added.

Qualified farmers will receive a special bank card or passbook from the government for transferring the subsidy. The Ministry of Finance will supervise the process of delivering the funds, it said.