Shanghai Daily news

Housing prices in Shanghai rose by 14.6 percent last year, slower than the growth rate in 2003, although the price of homes inside the Inner Ring Road grew much quicker, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau announced yesterday.
Citywide, housing prices grew 5 percentage points less than 2003, the bureau said yesterday while announcing municipal statistics for last year.
The city's GDP grew by 13.6 percent last year, the fastest growth rate since 1996, while the registered unemployment rate fell to 4.5 percent, the first decline in a decade.
"Overall, the city's real estate maintained healthy development as demand was a little higher than supply," Cai Xuchu, a spokesman for the statistics bureau, said at a municipal news conference yesterday.
Cai did note that housing prices did rise "too fast" in "some areas," mainly within the Inner Ring Road.
The average price of a home in the city last year was 6,385 yuan (US$769) per square meter, an increase of 14.6 percent year-on-year. He noted the growth rate had declined by about 5 percentage points from the previous year.
Cai said about 20 percent of buildings constructed last year were set aside for people relocated to make way for the city's urban construction. Those buildings, which are mainly in the city's suburbs, sold for 3,500 yuan per square meter on average.
"That's why the average real estate price for last year was much lower than most of us expected," said Cai.
He said most apartments within the Inner Ring Road sold for more than 10,000 yuan per square meter, an increase of 27 percent year-on-year.
"The government is trying to take better control of the city's real estate market, expecting that the growth rate will continue to decline," he said.
Cai acknowledged that the city has a limited amount of land resources and it has to guarantee a certain area of land for agricultural use.
The bureau also announced yesterday that the city's trade volume, including imports and exports, grew 42.4 percent last year to US$160.026 billion. Contracted foreign investment rose 12.6 percent last year.
The bureau also said the number of private cars in the city grew 41.5 percent last year to 317,700, while the average disposable income of urban residents grew 12.2 percent year-on-year to reach 16,683 yuan.