The world's largest humanitarian agency wants China to be one of its most important partners a year after the country stopped receiving food aid.

"We need help from those countries who care and have the capacity, experience and resources, and China is in that category now," said James Morris, executive director of the United National World Food Program (WFP), on Thursday.

China ended its 26-year-long history as a WFP food recipient at the end of 2005 and became the agency's third largest donor after the United States and European Union in the same year, with a food donation of 577,000 metric tons, two and a half times that of 2004.

"The WFP expects to expand its partnership with China to procurement, logistics and private sectors," said Morris in an interview with Xinhua on his three-day visit to Beijing.

The WFP received about 30 million U.S. dollars worth of food and services from China last year and expects more over time, provided with competitive prices, good quality and plenty of cash resources, said Morris.

In the past seven years, the Chinese government has made highways in the country's Tibetan Autonomous Region available for WFP deliveries of food aid to Nepal, saving the agency more than 800,000 U.S. dollars, or five sixths its transport cost in a whole year, he said.

"The WFP expects the donations from Chinese enterprises and individuals to continue to grow in future," said Morris.

He added that global private communities contributed to 2 to 3 percent of the whole support the WFP received last year, and the value will hopefully quintuple to 300 million U.S. dollars five years later.

"What China has accomplished in moving so many people across the country out of hunger and poverty is one of mankind's greatest accomplishments, but China needs to share that expertise with the rest of the world," said Morris during his three-day visit to Beijing.

China helped 195 million people shake off poverty from 1999 to 2002, more than 90 percent of the world poverty reduction, according to the latest world poverty report by the World Bank.

Morris said the change of China's role as a recipient is "a great thing", and asked the country to give the same kind of help it received to other countries in desperate need.

The WFP had offered China aid worth almost 1 billion U.S. dollars and fed more than 30 million impoverished Chinese by the end of 2005.

"The rest of the places around the world are just in need of China's help. I would make the case for China to work bilaterally or work multilaterally, which is the best option," said Morris.

He noted that multilateral cooperation involving the WFP can ensure that the help gets to the most needy effectively.

Over 90 percent of aid distributed through the WFP went to the most vulnerable people, especially women and children, while less than half of bilateral aid is focused on the people who need it most, said Morris.

China has donated nearly 11 million U.S dollars to the WFP in the past six to seven years, most of it going to Africa, the agency said on its website.

Morris also urged China to share its agricultural skills as well as experience of building emergency response systems, fighting disasters and addressing child hunger.

Established in 1963, the WFP has so far spent a total of 30 billion U.S. dollars on needy people and offered more than 47 million metric tons of food to feed 90 million people annually on average.