The People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, is to carry an editorial on Friday calling for efforts to usher in a new stage of scientific development in national economy.

The editorial coincides with the closing of China's three-day Central Economic Work Conference, which maps out the country's major economic strategies and policies for 2007.

The editorial says the country has made prominent achievements in the first year of the 11th five-year plan (2006-2010), with national economy developing toward the direction pre-determined in the state's macro-economic policy, such as improved development conditions and environment, fairly good economic efficiency, low inflation rate, and improved living standards.

However, some contradictions and problems are still prominent in economic and social development, including a weak agricultural basis, risks of economic fluctuations caused by investment rebounds and the excessive cost of economic growth. As a result, necessary preparations should be made to meet various possible challenges and risks.

The emphasis for next year's economic work should be put on the building of a socialist harmonious society, strengthening and improving macro-economic control, restructuring the economy and transforming modes of growth, saving of resources and protecting the environment, promoting reform and opening and independent innovation, pushing forward social development and solving problems concerning people's livelihoods, it says.

It stresses that, to achieve a good and fast development of national economy, it is necessary to correctly deal with relations between investment and consumption, and internal and external demand, according to which major efforts should be made to rationally control investment, optimize investment structure, actively expand consumption demand while reducing trade surplus.

The state should unswervingly stick to the principle of developing rural areas and giving more support to less-developed central and western areas, so as to promote a balanced national development, it says.