China to Improve Statistical System for Housing Prices

 BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- China has drawn up a plan to improve the statistical system for its housing prices, which is expected to be put into use next year, said Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The draft plan would be published before October to solicit public opinions and is expected to be implemented at the beginning of 2011, Ma said during a two-day seminar that ended Wednesday.

According to Ma, many changes would be made on the current housing price statistical system, including the sources of data, survey methods, data summarization and calculation methodology.

Currently, NBS releases the average housing price in China's 70 major cities, which is based on statistics reported by real estate developers or collected from these cities by price inspectors.

The reliability of Chinese government housing price data was questioned earlier this year after two government departments released data that contradicted each other.

In February of this year, the NBS said China's average housing price rose 1.5 percent year on year in 2009. However, according to data released by a price monitoring agency in the Ministry of Land and Resources, the average residential housing price increased 25.1 percent last year from one year earlier.

Further, Ma added that to maintain the comparability of data, the current statistical system would remain in use for another one year, even if the new system begins operating in 2011.