China's Urban Fixed Asset Investment Up 26.8% during Jan.-Nov.

BEIJING, Dec. 16 -- China's urban fixed asset investment was up 26.8 percent year-on-year at 12.76 trillion yuan(1.87 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first 11 months of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

    The growth rate was 0.4 percentage points lower than the first 10 months but unchanged from a year earlier.

    The figure is a key measure of spending on factories, production facilities and real estate development.

    Investment growth looked more buoyant when expressed in real terms, Morgan Stanley Asia chief economist for China Wang Qing said in a report.

    "The slowdown in urban fixed asset investment growth over the past couple of months could be partly attributed to the sharp dropin inflation of late," he said.

    The producer price index, a measurement of factory-gate inflation, fell to just 2 percent in November, from a peak of 10.1percent in August.

    The consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, slowed to 2.4 percent last month, from 4 percent in October.

    Further easing in inflation would likely mean lower investment growth, said Wang, but he expected the government's aggressive fiscal stimulus package to provide meaningful real support to growth.

    The number of industrial projects under way totaled 328,977, up8.6 percent year-on-year. Their combined planned investment was 28.85 trillion yuan, up 19.7 percent. Of this, 228,776 were new projects with a combined investment of 7.75 trillion yuan, up 5.4 percent.

    A senior NBS official who declined to be identified said the increasing investment in the new projects would accelerate investment growth.

    The official said faster growth in investment and fiscal expenditure last month also indicated the government's efforts to loosen fiscal and monetary conditions since October have begun to pay off.

    Following the stream of bad economic news over the past week, urban fixed asset investment data offered some comfort that government-driven investment would support growth, Wang said.

    A breakdown of recent data confirmed that the government has accelerated investment spending to boost growth in the face of worsening external conditions, he said.

    Investment in real estate development totaled 2.65 trillion yuan, up 22.7 percent. The growth rate was 1.9 percentage points lower than the January-October level.

    Investment in primary industry was 194.5 billion yuan, up 57.4 percent. The figures for secondary and tertiary industry were 5.72trillion yuan and 6.84 trillion yuan, up 29.5 percent and 24.1 percent, respectively.

    The bureau said actual investment from enterprises on the mainland totaled 11.44 trillion yuan, up 28 percent, while that from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan was 561.3 billion yuan, up 18.2 percent.

    Foreign investment rose more slowly, growing 15.8 percent to 687.3 billion yuan.

    By sector, coal mining saw a 34.8 percent increase. Investment in the thermal power industry jumped 15.7 percent and oil and gas development investment was up 34.8 percent from a year earlier.

    Source:(Xinhua)