China's fixed-asset investment sees steady growth, better structure

BEIJING - Growth in China's fixed-asset investment (FAI) maintained a stable growth in the first ten months of this year while investment structure continued to improve, official data showed Tuesday.

In the January-October period, FAI grew 7.3 percent year-on-year to 51.78 trillion yuan (about $7.8 trillion), according to the the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The growth was 0.2 percentage points slower from the January-September level. On a month-on-month basis, FAI in October rose 0.52 percent from that of September.

Infrastructure investment maintained a strong pace by rising 19.6 percent in the ten-month period, driven by investment in public facility management and road transport.

Despite some fluctuations in monthly figures, "investment has continued to play a role in improving supply structure," Liu Aihua, a spokesperson with the NBS, told a press conference.

FAI to high-tech manufacturing jumped 16.8 percent in the first ten months, much faster than the overall investment growth, NBS data showed.

Meanwhile, investment to high energy-consuming industries dropped 2.2 percent year-on-year.

The NBS calculation does not include investment made by farmers. It includes projects with planned investment of more than 5 million yuan and all property development.