Spending for the first five months of the year was up 25.8 percent year-on-year at 782.8 billion yuan, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.

For the past four years, China has been investing heavily in infrastructure and other public projects in an attempt to lift economic growth, currently about seven percent, according to state figures.

While Tuesday's figures indicate this policy is continuing, May's figures nonetheless represent a slight drop from the previous month.

In April alone, fixed-asset investment grew 28.7 percent year-on-year with the figure for the first four months of 2002 standing at 27.1 percent.

However spending on infrastructure grew at a quicker rate, up 22.8 percent in the year to May against 21.2 percent in the year to April.

With a long-running campaign to boost investment in China's impoverished west, fixed-asset investment there grew 19.2 percent year-on-year to the end of May.

(China Daily June 18, 2002)