Housing Reform Achieves Remarkable Progress: Minister

Housing provided by work units has been terminated in China, and most provinces and autonomous regions have established programs by which individuals and families are responsible for renting or buying their own residences, said Minister of Construction Yu Zhengsheng in Beijing Wednesday.

Yu told a press conference on housing reform that reform of the housing provision system has played an important role in promoting residential home buying, and ordinary residents have increasingly become the major players in the housing market.

Yu noted that over 70 percent of the commercial houses sold in cities and towns across the country were bought by individuals.

In most provinces and cities, around 60 percent of all public houses have been sold to individuals, and the proportion surpassed 80 percent in Chongqing Municipality, and the provinces of Zhejiang and Henan.

Moreover, China has further improved the housing fund system and accelerated the development of housing loans to individuals.

By the end of last year, the number of employees participating in the housing fund system had reached 69 million, and some 140.9 billion yuan had been collected for the fund, representing an increase of 39.8 billion yuan over the previous year.

According to Yu, various commercial banks have also expanded loans to individuals. From January to December 1999, the Industrial and Commercial Bank, the Agricultural Bank, the Bank of China, and the Construction Bank, granted 74.6 billion yuan in housing loans to individuals, with the loan balance topping 126 billion yuan, an increase of 76.9 billion yuan compared with 1998.

The minister said that the housing reform also has boosted the development of housing construction. Statistics show that the completed floor space of commercial houses in 1999 totaled 162 million square meters, an increase of 29.8 percent over the previous year, and total floor space of 91.63 million square meters of economy housing was also completed last year, an increase of 66 percent over 1998.

Back to top
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All rights reserved