MNI BRIEF: Beijing Industrial Value Added Up In Jan Feb

Beijing municipality’s industrial enterprise added value increased 6.4% y/y during January and February, driven by automobile and electronic communication manufacturing up 33.7% and 20.3%, data from the city’s statistics department showed on Tuesday.

Fixed asset investment jumped 31.2% y/y due to recent equipment purchases, while consumption and consumer prices fell 0.1% and 0.5%.

The sales area of newly built commercial housing totalled 946,000 square meters, marking a decrease of 17.8%, attributed to the substantial sale of affordable housing during the same period last year. However, sales increased by 13.9% y/y when adjusting for these effects.

China needs additional official support for its property market to consolidate a recent stabilisation in home sales, including faster moves to restructure real-estate developers to avoid large-scale defaults MNI reported recently. (See MNI INTERVIEW2: China Developers Need More Help To Consolidate)