SHANGHAI plans to build a new storage base which can guarantee supply of one week's vegetable and meat for city residents, an official at the Shanghai Commerce Commission said yesterday. At present, Shanghai can only promise food supply for two days. The construction of the base requires two to three years, and its location is yet to be decided. The current top priority is to tame inflation and ensure people's lives are not distorted by irregular price rises, Gu Jun, vice director of the commission, said yesterday when a group of delegates of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the city's top political advisory body, conducted a year-end inspection in the Shanghai Xijiao International Agricultural Product Trade Center in Qingpu District. The center sells products that come from around the country, including rice from Heilongjiang Province, pomegranates from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and cooking oil from the Tibet Autonomous Region. It aims to become a major international trade platform for agricultural products. In a report released yesterday, the commission said Shanghai's economic growth is expected to be stable this year. The city's annual retail expenditure may increase 17.3 percent from a year earlier to 603 billion yuan (US$90.6 billion). Contracted direct foreign investment may grow 12.8 percent annually to US$15 billion this year. Exports may expand between 25 percent and 30 percent this year from the level in 2009.