China plans to allocate 2.8 billion yuan from its central budget to support live pig production.

The funds will be used to build breeding farms and standard large scale piggeries to promote pork production and further ensure market supply, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Friday.

About 70 million yuan of the funding will go to poultry farm construction, according to the NDRC.

The NDRC has channeled an accumulative 5.6 billion yuan from its central budget to livestock farm construction this year.

Currently, 55 breeding farms, 375 propagation piggeries, 70 poultry farms and 20,000 standard large scale hog breeding farms have been established.

The NDRC also said the government planned to allocate more funds to the snow havoc and earthquake-hit regions where breeding facilities suffered severe damage in the disasters.

Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Guangxi, Anhui, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu were included.

A total of 69.56 million livestock and poultries were estimated to have been killed in the snow havoc in the first quarter, while more than 3 million pigs were killed in the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake.

(Xinhua News Agency July 11, 2008)