Chinas import of major agricultural products continued to increase fast in the first five months of the year, driven by price gaps between domestically produced products and imported products, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

imports of soybeans increased by nearly 20 percent to 37 million tons compared with the same period last year, Wang Ping, deputy chief of the ministrys Department of Market and Economic Information, said at a news conference on Monday.

The prices of many agricultural products produced in China are higher than the international level due to higher production costs, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. An exception is corn, whose average wholesale price was 1.58 yuan (23 cents) per kilogram in the first part of the year, similar to the international level, a decrease of 14.4 percent year-on-year, according to the ministry.

Due to causes such as increasing supply, prices of agricultural products in China, in general, have kept falling since the beginning of this year, with prices of fresh and perishable products, such as vegetables seeing a steep decline, Wang, from the Ministry of Agriculture, said.