Property prices continue to climb nationally despite government measures to hose down the sizzling property market.

Housing prices in 70 large and medium-sized cities rose an average of 5.6 percent year on year in January, 0.2 percent faster than December last year, the country's top planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said yesterday.

Meanwhile, prices in the secondary housing market rose 5.3 percent in January, a jump of 1.1 percent from the previous month.

Non-residential property prices have also risen, according to NDRC's latest monthly housing price index report.

Shenzhen ranked the first in the price hike last month with an annual rise of 10.2 percent.

Prices in Beijing have jumped 9.9 percent in one year, marking the second fastest growth rate among the 70 cities.

Fuzhou and Guangzhou were also highly ranked in the property price stakes.

The central government has issued a raft of measures to rein in soaring housing prices.

It has issued an official mandate to build more smaller houses and to levy more value-added tax on developers.

And starting from this month, tax authorities have begun enforcing a land tax on developers, which would slug them with up to 60 percent of the net income of a real estate project depending on the profits they made.

(China Daily 02/16/2007 page3)