BEIJING - China will enhance and improve macro-economic regulation to ensure stable and healthy economic development next year, said a statement released Sunday after the annual Central Economic Work Conference.

Next year's macro-regulation should basically be proactive, stable, prudent and flexible, the statement said.

The focus will be better handling the relationship between stable and relatively fast economic development, economic restructuring and inflation expectations in an active and stable way, it said.

Participants at the three-day conference, one of China's most important economic-policy-making events, agreed to exert more efforts to keep prices stable next year.

They also agreed to accelerate the strategic transformation of the economic development pattern in order to make economic development more coordinated, sustainable and reliant on the domestic economy.

China's economy grew 9.6 percent year on year in the third quarter this year, slowing from the 10.3-percent increase in the second quarter and 11.9-percent surge in the first quarter.

Inflation picked up to a 28-month high of 5.1 percent in November, as bank lending looked certain to exceed the 7.5-trillion-yuan full-year target the government set at the start of the year.

Similarly, growth in the broad money supply (M2) - cash in circulation and all deposits - will surpass the government's full-year target of 17 percent.

Moreover, the U.S. Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing has increased the risk of imported inflation.

To curb inflation and soak up excessive liquidity, the country's central bank has raised banks' reserve requirement ratio six times this year. It also lifted the benchmark lending and deposit rates on October 20, the first such move in nearly three years.

The meeting reaffirmed to boost farm produce supply through the development of modern agriculture in 2011, and clamp down on price speculation which is largely blamed for hiking prices.

The statement said the country will mainly employ economic and legal means, with administrative measures used when necessary, to keep the overall prices "basically stable".

On December 3, China said it would shift its monetary policy stance in 2011 to "prudent" from "relatively loose."

"Credit should go to the real economy, especially the agricultural sector and small business," the statement said.

The meeting reaffirmed the continuation of the government's proactive fiscal policy and steady growth in fiscal revenue. It also stressed austerity in government administrative expenditure, adding that local governments should strengthen debt management efforts.

Gao Peiyong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said a combination of proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy underscore the complications of the current economic situation.

"Macro-regulation has various goals. One is preventing the economy being affected by the global financial crisis. Another is curbing inflation. The situation is more complicated than before," he said.

The statement said the world's economy is likely to resume growing next year, though many uncertainties will remain.

"The global financial crisis had a significant impact on the global economy and the world economic order is undergoing profound and complicated change," it said.

Participants at the meeting agreed China's stable economic development will encounter a complicated situation next year, with many challenges and difficulties.

The uncertainties for the Chinese economy include: the grain harvest and farmers'income; increased pressure to adjust the economic structure; resource and environment bottlenecks; the challenging task of improving people's livelihood and guaranteeing social stability.

The statement urged local authorities to be rational when making development targets, avoid blind pursuit of high growth rates and focus more on improving the quality and efficiency of growth as well as  boosting employment and improving the public's standards of living.

At the meeting, it was agreed to make more efforts to boost consumer spending, check industries with excess capacity, upgrade the traditional manufacturing sector and strengthen the service industry.

"Earnest efforts should be made to develop the emerging strategic industries and to strengthen energy-saving and emission-reduction efforts," the statement said.

"China will further improve the Renminbi's exchange rate formation mechanism and keep the yuan basically stable and at a reasonable and balanced level," it said.

In 2011, the start of China's 12th Five-year Program (2011-2015), China will make concrete efforts to improve people's living standards, it said. The efforts will go to promoting improvements in education, cultural undertakings, health-care system reform, boosting employment, accelerating the construction of affordable housing and building a social security system that will cover both urban and rural residents.

The statement also said the country will maintain its mutually-beneficial opening-up strategy. "The country will continue to lay equal stress on imports and exports, as well as the attraction of foreign investment and making investments abroad."

China pledged to increase imports next year and make imports  play an important role in the country's drive to rebalance the national economy, according to the statement.

The country also vowed to study and formulate a guideline on income  distribution reform as an effort to prevent the further widening of the wealth gap.