Staff members prepare pork at a supermarket in Nanchang, east China's Jiangxi Province, Dec. 22, 2019. Local authorities has released on Sunday more frozen pork reserves to ensure market supply for the upcoming holidays and to keep the pork price stable. The price is 43.2 yuan (about 6.2 U.S. dollars) per kg. (Xinhua/Peng Zhaozhi)

China will look at every possible way to support the recovery of pig production to ensure meat supplies for the coming New Year and the Spring Festival, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China said on Sunday.

"[We] must increase supplies through all means and manage better to ensure meat supplies in the New Year and the Spring Festival," the ministry said in a statement after a meeting of senior officials from across the country about priorities for 2020.

Pork prices have been skyrocketing in China as supplies have been squeezed by the outbreak of African swine fever. This trend has even lifted up the consumer price index (CPI) significantly. The rise in pork prices contributed 60 percent of the CPI rise in November, according to the statistics released by the National Development and Reform Commission on Tuesday.

Due to the sharp rise in pork prices, pig breeding companies have become one of the fastest-growing industries in China in terms of profit.

A leading pig supplier, Mayuan Foods, saw its share price rise 200 percent this year. That took the company's chairman, 54-year-old Qin Yinglin, to ninth place on the Forbes list of the richest people in the Chinese mainland in 2019, surpassing Dalian Wanda Group's Wang Jianlin, JD.com's Liu Qiangdong and Baidu's Li Yanhong.

Feng Yonghui, chief analyst at hog market information provider soozhu.com, told the Global Times on Sunday that the market profits of the hog industry are very high due to the shortage of supplies. 

"The high price is definitely encouraging pig suppliers to breed more pigs," Feng said. "Meanwhile, in order to maximize production, the government's policy support is also needed."
Newspaper headline: Govt to ensure pork supply during holidays amid shortage