China to improve real estate statistics (Xinhua) Updated: 2005-06-07 13:54
The Chinese government will
implement a nationwide reform in July to make real estate statistics more
objective and reasonable, according to a report in Beijing-based Economic
Reference newspaper.
More than 100 statists chosen from 30 Chinese provinces, municipalities and
autonomous regions have attended a training course on real estate price
statistics held in Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan Province.
"With the rapid development of China's housing industry, current official
statistics do not fully represent the general real estate situation or meet the
public demand," Hu Xiufu, an official with the National Bureau of Statistics
(NBS), was quoted as saying.
The real estate market is one of the most sensitive and controversial sectors
in China. Residents of big cities are concerned about housing prices, which have
been rising continuously since China phased-out free government-provided houses
in the early 1990s.
At present, Hu said, statistics on China's real estate market are issued by
different government departments and some are inconsistent.
Last year, the country's average housing price rose by 14.4 percent,
according to the NBS. But, local department statistics told a different story
early this year -- Beijing's housing pricelevel had been dropping.
After seven government departments issued last month a new policy to cool
China's rocketing housing prices, some statistics showed that the price level in
major metropolises decreased, but other statistics indicated no obvious changes.
The inconsistencies have led to a puzzled public.
A real estate expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told the
Economic Reference that even the NBS figures arejust a kind of reference to his
research, which mainly depends on his own investigation.
With the housing industry booming in some medium-sized cities, NBS' current
investigation sample, which only covers 35 cities across the country, is not
large enough to represent the overall development, Hu said, adding that some
burgeoning cities must be included in the sample under the new circumstances.
Taking Shandong as an example, the previous NBS real estate sample only
included two coastal cities, Jinan and Qingdao, in east China's Shandong
Province. As the two cities can't represent the true picture of the estate
market in Shandong, the government has decided to add two more cities, Yantai
and Jining, to the sample list of Shandong.
During the forthcoming reform on statistical method, the NBS will include
another 35 cities in its investigation sample. This means that sample cities
represent more than 80 percent of the total real estate investment in the
country, Hu said.
From July on, the 70 listed cities will be required to monthly report their
housing price index to the NBS.
"New statistical materials provided by those cities will include more indexes
and be more timely and all-sided," Hu said.
The reform on current statistical work in housing industry is "necessary,"
said Zhang Chengyao, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"The statistical work by far, is far from satisfactory," he said.
