China's state news wire and the nation's economic planning body on Friday agreed to establish a research institute studying domestic pricing to provide references for government's macro-regulation.

Hu Zucai, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), hoped the institute could do forward-looking and strategically-significant studies on issues such as pricing regulation and reform, based on a global perspective.

Shen Haixiong, deputy chief editor of Xinhua News Agency, said with its well-established global and domestic network gathering news and information, Xinhua could provide timely price data on energy and resource products worldwide and real-time prices of domestic farm produce.

This institute could leverage Xinhua's advantages in data collection to provide important information for government's decision-making, he said. Endi