China's fixed asset investment grew by 34.8 percent to 1,543.7 billion yuan (186.5 billion U.S. dollars) in January-May this year, but the growth rate was 8 percentage points lower than that in January-April, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Monday.

According to NBS statistics, fixed asset investment, mainly in construction and factory equipment, stood at 439 billion yuan (53 billion US dollars) in May, up 18.3 percent year on year, but the growth rate declined by 16.4 percent compared with April. The number of new projects was reduced by 15.7 percent from a year earlier.

The growth rate of fixed asset investment in the state-owned or state holding sector in January-May went down by 4 percentage points from that in January-April, while that in housing projects dropped by 2.1 percentage points.

The western areas kept the highest growth rate in fixed asset investment among all the regions in the first five months of this year. The growth rate there reached 43.2 percent, higher than 32.5percent in eastern areas and 40.7 percent in central areas.

The investment growth rate in the second industry was slashed by 10.3 percentage points, compared with 6.2 percentage points for the primary industry sector and 6.5 percentage points for the tertiary industry.

While oil processing and coke production sectors saw a slight increase in fixed asset investment, all major sectors of the secondary industry witnessed a fall, with 20.4 percentage points in textiles, 7.5 percentage points in chemical raw materials and products, and 26.9 percentage points in non-metal minerals manufacturing.