China's fixed asset investment expands 24.8% in 2007

BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- China's fixed-asset investment rose 24.8 percent year-on-year in 2007, up 0.9 percentage points from 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday.

The overall investment in assets last year stood at 13.7 trillion yuan (1.9 trillion U.S. dollars).

Investment in the booming real estate sector continued to grow rapidly, said NBS head Xie Fuzhan.

It scored a high rate of 30.2 percent in 2007, up 8.4 percentage points from a year earlier, Xie said. Total investment in the sector was 2.5 trillion yuan.

The urban fixed-asset investment was 11.7 trillion yuan, representing an annual increase of 25.8 percent and up 1.5 percentage points from the previous year.

However, the figure was already down from 26.8 percent for the first 11 months of last year.

Investment in rural areas came at a much smaller 1.98 trillion yuan, up 19.2 percent year-on-year.