The income gap between China's rural and urban residents  has continued to widen during the past few years in spite of rapidly rising rural incomes, Agricultural Minister Sun Zhengcai said here on Wednesday. The income ratio  between urban and rural residents was 3.28:1 in 2006, against 3.23:1 in 2003, said Sun in his report on the promotion of building a new countryside in 2007. Sun also said the net income of rural residents in different regions also varied widely. The income gap is only one of several problems in rural areas, according to Sun's report. While listing the achievements in rural areas in recent years, Sun believed that rural development still followed behind urban development. "We have bigger pressure to ensure the supply of major agricultural products such as grain," he said. "China's urbanization  has been speeded up and more rural residents have gone to urban areas," he said. "In this case, more agricultural producers become farm produce consumers, which created more pressure for supply," he said. Another problem facing China's agricultural development is _ application of science and technology. "Only 30 percent of scientific and technological achievements have been applied to agricultural production, which is 40 percentage points lower than developed countries," he said. Despite increased government spending in rural areas, the infrastructure  is still poor and easily hit by disasters. According to Sun, the government spent 431.8 billion yuan ($59.15 billion) on agriculture, rural areas and farmers this year, an increase of 80.1 billion yuan over the previous year. China set aside 11.38 billion yuan to promote a new rural cooperative medical care system and 27.98 billion yuan to support the new compulsory education mechanism in rural area to ensure that all citizens shared the fruits of China's reform and opening-up, Sun said. How much is spent on agriculture, rural areas and farmers the previous year?
431.8 billion yuan 511.9 billion yuan 351.7 billion yuan 80.1 billion yuan