Companies and government agencies must "spare no efforts to carry out various measures to ensure diesel supplies in the rural areas," the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website.

The ministry said it would closely monitor inventories and clamp down on any unapproved price hikes and speculative hoarding.

China's government is paying close attention to inflation, which is lingering near 12-year highs and is hitting the countryside harder than the cities.

In March, rural inflation was 9.0 percent, compared with urban inflation of 8.0 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Chinese oil companies, despite huge profits from upstream operations, have been suffering from heavy losses in refining operations because of soaring crude oil prices and the country's central pricing system for oil products.

The country's biggest oil refiner Sinopec has received 12.3 billion yuan (1.8 billion dollars) in subsidies from the government for refining losses in 2007 and the first quarter of 2008, the third such bail-out since 2005.

Sinopec and fellow oil giant PetroChina also said over the weekend that Beijing would offer a monthly subsidy from April to help them cover losses incurred in refining imported crude oil.

But shortages of fuel, particularly diesel, remain a problem, according to reports in state media.

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