SHANGHAI-Housing prices in China’s largest cities are showing signs of improvement, official data showed Monday.
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BEIJING-Value-added industrial output in China rose 5.9% in December from a year earlier, slowing from 6.2% growth in November, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed Tuesday.
China’s crude steel output fell a year ago for the first time since 1981, official figures and reports said today, amid a wider slowdown in the country’s economy and European accusations of dumping. And new construction growth, an important indicator, has continued to slow over the past year, as developers struggle with a huge inventory of unsold property.
The NBS data showed on-month price rises were seen in 39 of 70 major cities tracked by the NBS, up from 33 in November.
On a yearly basis, 21 cities posted new home price increases and 49 reported falls, the same with that in November. Excessive inventories have yet to be cleared in these regions, the bureau said.
Economists had expected investment growth would come in at 10.2 per cent – the same rate as in the first 11 months of 2015.
China’s top leaders have made reducing excess stock in the housing market a key task for in 2016, although a plan to encourage migrants to buy unsold homes in lower-tier cities faces challenges. The plan is likely to be targeted at smaller cities where sales are slumping – as the government seeks to “urbanize” 100 million people over the next five years.
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Growth in real estate investment slowed to 1.0 percent in 2015 from the previous year, compared with an increase of 1.3 percent in January-November.
