China takes comprehensive measures to curb excessive investment

A senior Chinese official pledged Wednesday that China would take comprehensive measures to curb excessive investment in the fixed asset sector and attract more funds to invest in the agricultural, forestry and public service sectors.

As it did in the past, China in the future would adopt preferential policies to help the fund-thirsty sectors to get more investment, Cao Yushu, spokesman of China's State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC), said at a press conference in Beijing.

He said that the current goal of China's macroeconomic management was to curb the blind investment and expansion in investment fields and the management approaches would be mostly based on economic and legal means, supplemented by some administrative measures.

Latest official statistics showed that China's industrial production was growing at a slower pace in May, up 17.5 percent year on year to 431 billion yuan (52.5 billion US dollars). The growth rate was 1.6 percentage points lower than in April, continuing the downward trend in monthly growth since March.

The statistics also showed that the fixed asset investment grew by 34.8 percent to 1,543.7 billion yuan (186.5 billion US. dollars) in January-May this year, eight percentage points lower than that in January-April.

The current economy is sound in general, Cao said, adding that the macroeconomic measures timely taken by China have yielded obvious results and unstable and unsound elements in the economy have been eliminated.