As northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region recently witnessed its rural people pay for their electricity use at same price as urban residents, China ended its decades of rural electricity prices being higher than urban prices.

An official with the State Development and Reform Commission announced Wednesday that except for the Tibet Autonomous Region, all other places in the mainland had set the same electricity prices for rural and urban residents.

In Tibet, the rural electricity price is lower than the urban price.

The move unifying the rural and urban electricity prices has helped rural people save 42 billion yuan (US$5.1 billion) every year, according to the State Development and Reform Commission.

In 1998 the State Council made the decision to unify rural and urban electricity prices, and the government invested 288.5 billion yuan for renovation of its rural grids. The current electricity price for all residents is about 0.5 yuan per kwh, but rural people used to pay 0.23 yuan higher per kwh than urban residents.

(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2004)