Vice-Minister of Construction Liu Zhifeng said here Thursday that in the coming decades, the country will maintain a high rise in housing consumption as 95 percent of house purchasers in China are individuals.

Liu made the remarks at an international forum on housing industry and urban development, which is a part of the three-day International Forum on Urban Development held in Beijing.

According to Liu, in 2002, China's urban residents spent 800 billion yuan (about US$96.6 billion) on house purchase and construction, 29.4 percent of the country's total urban consumption.

The rising demand for houses has sped up China's urban housing industry, said Liu. China invested 940.7 billion yuan (US$113.6 billion) in house construction last year, accounting for 21.8 percent of China's total fixed asset investment, and 9.2 percent of the country's GDP, completing 1.31 billion square meters of houses.

Liu said today the average living area of Chinese urban residents is 22.8 square meters, and that of the rural residents is 26 square meters, which means great potential for further development in China's housing industry, especially in the urban areas.

China plans to increase the national average living area to 32 square meters by 2020, and to that end, China must add 14 billion square meters of new houses from this year to 2020, Liu said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 30, 2003)