BEIJING, May 13 -- China's property development climate index dropped 0.61 points from March to 95.79 points in April, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

In nominal terms, the country's investment in property development rose 16.4 percent year on year to 2.23 trillion yuan (about 362 billion U.S. dollars) in the first four months, slowing down by 0.4 percentage points from the first quarter, the NBS said in a statement.

The total area of property sales dropped 6.9 percent year on year in the first four months to 277.09 million square meters, data showed.