China's property market shows signs of improvement in first three quarters: NBS official

China's property market showed signs of stabilizing in the first three quarters of this year, as the decline in key sector indicators has narrowed, suggesting that the measures implemented to boost the housing market are having an effect, said an official from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday.

At a press conference in Beijing, Sheng Laiyun, deputy head of the NBS, said that a raft of pro-property market policies are kicking in, as evidenced by narrowing declines in property development investment and in real estate sales.

The investment in property market in China fell 10.1 percent year on year in the first nine months of the year, with the decline narrowing from the January-August period.

From January to September, the decline in the sold floor space of new commodity housing narrowed by 1.9 percentage points compared to the first half of the year, marking four consecutive months of narrowing. Meanwhile, the decline in housing sales narrowed for five consecutive months.

According to Sheng, the confidence in the property market has strengthened and expectations have improved.

"Recently, we conducted a special survey among real estate development enterprises and agencies in 70 large and medium-sized cities across China. In September, the percentage of real estate agents selling new homes who expressed optimism about their business operations increased by 10 percent compared to the previous month, and those selling pre-owned homes up by 6.5 percent. This indicates a significant boost in confidence. So, we have reason to believe that the property market is poised for positive changes," said Sheng.

China has rolled out a slew of policies to bolster the real estate sector, including cutting minimum down payment ratios, abolishing the commercial mortgage rate floors for first and second homes, and establishing a re-lending facility that supports local state-owned enterprises in using such funds to purchase commodity homes for affordable housing.

China's property market shows signs of improvement in first three quarters: NBS official

China has evolved as a partner of the World Bank in assisting low and middle-income countries by sharing its development experience with them, World Bank Senior Managing Director Axel van Trotsenburg said.

The managing director recently gave a lecture at Peking University in Beijing, where he discussed the World Bank's role in mitigating challenges such as post-pandemic recovery, climate change, supply chain disruption and geopolitical tensions.

In an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), van Trotsenburg acknowledged China's contribution to the World Bank's development.

"China has also evolved as a partner. In a sense, it is not only the knowledge sharing within China of its experiences, but also the knowledge sharing outside of China, particularly also the poorer countries, what they could learn from the Chinese experience. And so, what I would argue is that makes for an exciting program, an evolving nature and a continued challenge, because as long as we challenge each other, then you find again new programs in which you could jointly work together. So, this is in my mind, a very important feature, a successful feature, and I hope that will continue that road," he said.

The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects.

China evolves as partner of World Bank in assisting developing countries: senior official