China mulls rules to check profiteering in property sector
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China's top price regulator is mulling new rules to fight profiteering in the commercial property sector, a Chinese official told Xinhua Wednesday.
"We are studying costs, profits and prices in the property sector and plan to implement measures to check for profiteering," said Xu Kunlin, chief of the Price Department of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planner and price regulator.
The move is in line with China's existing anti-profiteering regulations.
"Profiteering in China's property market is high," said Mei Xinyu, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a government think tank under the Ministry of Commerce.
While affirming the need to cool China's overheated property market by cracking down on profiteering, Mei said the government faces challenges in actually taking action. China's anti-profiteering regulations, created in 1995 by the State Council, have been criticized for being incomplete and lacking detail.
"It will take great effort to overcome resistance from vested interests, who are used to huge profits in the sector, in implementing these new regulations," Mei said.
The NDRC already created regulations for the purpose of keeping housing prices down in March, in order to address public complaints about the lack of transparency in home pricing.
The regulations -- Regulations Regarding Marketing of Commercial Housing at Marked Prices -- will take effect on May 1.
A local official from Haikou, capital of Hainan Province, has dispelled misleading rumors about the city canceling its "purchase limit" - a policy used by the State Council to cool the property market.
Dai Kaiquan, chief of the market management section of Haikou City's Housing and Urban-Rural Construction Bureau, told Xinhua on Tuesday that Haikou would continue to use governmental property control policies and that there is no plan to suspend the purchase limit policy.
