 |
China Makes Headway in Housing Reform
China has achieved remarkable progress in its on-going housing reform nationwide, and most provinces and autonomous regions have established programs to sell houses to individuals instead of allocating residences to them as welfare benefits.
In most provinces, autonomous regions and municipal 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, Henan and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, according to Nie Meisheng, director of the Housing Industrialization Promotion Center under the Ministry of Construction.
She said in Beijing that the 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.
To date, over 70 percent of the commercial houses sold in cities and towns across the country were bought by individuals.
Moreover, China has further improved the public housing fund- raising 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.
In addition, various commercial banks have also extended 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.
In This Section
|