Government and Policy

China looks into housing vacancy rate

By Wang Xiaotian (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-09-02 19:34

SHUNYI, Beijing -- Chinese government plans to investigate the housing vacancy rate at some selected cities before the new statistical methods can be applied into more cities amid China's booming real easte industry.

Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Wednesday a series of reform plans to promote accuracy and credibility of China’s official statistics.

He said in the next two months, draft reform of housing price statistics would be published, scheduled to take effect in next year while the old method would still be used for consistent reference.

"We would also make best of the census this time to get information about residents’ vacant houses," said Ma, adding about 10 percent of the census respondents would be asked to answer questionnaire about residence information.

He said despite people’s various definition of “vacant” house, and unwillingness of some residents to provide true information, the government would try to implement relevant statistics on vacant houses in a relative accurate and professional way.

Ma added in 2011 the time interval between production of monthly data and their release date would be further shortened. (Now the data usually are produced on 8th or 9th of each month and published around 13th). And NBS would respond to public doubts and confusion in time to give professional and scientific feedback.

Ma took pressure from the public criticism as “strong momentum” for constant improvement of official statistics.

"China’s official statistics is at the right time to reform and development. Instead of being cracked down, the pressure would help us to improve our job without hesitation."