Beijing vice and acting mayor Guo Jinlong said Sunday the
municipal government will work to contain housing price hike and
provide low-rent housing for poor residents.
He said the government would strengthen the macro control on the
property market, adjust land provision and keep a tight housing
credit policy, among others, to achieve the goal.
The government would spend 2.9 billion yuan (40 million U.S.
dollars) to build and purchase 500,000 square meters of houses and
flats and rent them to low-income residents at affordable prices,
the official told about 770 lawmakers at the annual session of the
legislature.
Beijing would also build a total of 7.5 million square meters of
houses and flats with reasonable prices and sizes this year, as one
of the measures to curb the price hike, Guo added.
The government planed to spend 580 million yuan to renovate the
houses for 10,000 families that were in dangerous conditions.
The average property price in China's 70 and medium-sized cities
in December were up 10.5 percent from the same month of the
previous year, while in Beijing it was up 17.5 percent, according
to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) earlier
this week.
Officials with the Ministry of Construction have criticized that
some developers were only interested in building large-sized
luxurious apartments for high profit.
Some development companies hoarded land and apartments or spread
false information to create public fear for housing shortages so
they could drive up prices, Vice Minister of Construction Qi Ji
said.
Earlier this month, the State Council, China's cabinet, made
amendments to the Regulation on Administrative Punishment for Price
Violations to allow more stringent penalties for illegal price
manipulations.
(Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2008)