Housing construction will be
sped up to meet the huge demands on domestic market in China in the coming five to 10
years, the Ministry of Construction predicts.
Xie Jiajin, director of the Housing and Real Estate Industry
Department of the Ministry of Construction indicated that the housing industry will
increase.
Xie added that the Chinese people are catering to individual
purchases on houses, instead of getting houses from their work units; house transactions
and investment will be more active; and the per capital housing acreage cannot satisfy the
demands of the Chinese people.
A plan by the ministry calls for each urban resident to obtain
22 square meters of housing on average, individual consumption of housing will make up 15
percent of the total.
The urbanization rate will increase by 36 percent and 86 percent
of the urban families will have access to natural gas by 2005.
The central government has also vowed to increase the housing
acreage of both urban and rural residents and improve the quality of houses in its 10th
five-year plan (2001-2005).
details>>