China's H1 fixed asset investment up 17.3%

BEIJING - China's fixed asset investment edged up 17.3 percent year on year in the first six months of 2014, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Wednesday.

The investment growth pace for the first half of this year was 0.1 percentage point up from the Jan-May period this year, though it was 0.3 percentage points lower than the same period last year, according to the NBS.

In the first six months, total investment hit 21.28 trillion yuan ($3.43 trillion). Investment in the agricultural sector jumped 24.1 percent, up 3.3 percentage points from the first five months.

Since last August, investment growth has been in constant decline amid a slowdown in the country's economic growth.

After getting off to a weak start, China's economic growth quickened to 7.5 percent between April and June on an annual basis, up from the 7.4 percent pace in the first quarter, adding another sign of stabilization in the world's second-largest economy.

However, downward pressure on economic growth still exists, with a cooling property sector weighing on the investment growth.

The NBS data showed that property investment rose 14.1 percent year on year in the first six months to 4.2 trillion yuan, 0.6 percentage point down from the first five months and 2.7 percentage points down from the first quarter.