China Vanke Co, the country's largest publicly traded real estate developer, said sales posted a decline of 14 percent last month from a year earlier to 5.34 billion yuan (US$782 million).

Sales for last year dropped 8.7 percent to 47.87 billion yuan, the Shenzhen-based real estate company said in a statement to the city's stock exchange yesterday.

(Shanghai Daily January 6, 2009)