Beijing's fixed-asset investment reached 282.7 billion yuan (about US$34.9 billion) in 2005 with investment in the real estate market still comprising more than half of that, according to the municipal bureau of statistics.

The city's investment in the real estate market accounted for 53.9 percent of the total fixed-asset investment with a growth rate of 3.5 percent, dropping by 19 percentage points compared with the previous year.

In the past year, Beijing has made an investment of 61 billion yuan (some US$7.5 billion) in infrastructure construction and 23.2 billion yuan (about US$2.86 billion) in rural infrastructure development, up by 31.8 percent and 18.7 percent respectively over the year 2004, said Yu Xiuqin, spokeswoman of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics.

In the meantime, the city's investment in ecological environment protection projects grew by 23.6 percent, 17.9 percent higher than that in the new urban development work.

During the 2001-2005 period, Beijing registered a fixed-asset investment totaling 1.09 trillion yuan (about US$134.6 billion), doubling that of the 1996-2000 period, said the spokeswoman, adding that investment in the real estate sector has tripled from the previous five-year period.

(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2006)