China's urban fixed asset investment totaled 812.1 billion yuan (about US$114.4 billion) in the first two months of this year, up 24.3 percent year on year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.

The figure represented a slight acceleration, by 0.9 percentage points over the figures for the same period in 2007.

Investment in the booming real estate sector grew 32.9 percent to 237.4 billion yuan, according to the NBS.

Wang Tongsan, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the overall growth rate was not so high amid soaring prices, but investment in property was still too hot despite the government's efforts to cool it down.

The NBS said earlier this week that inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, was 8.7 percent year on year in February, a 12-year high.

Another key inflation indicator, the producer price index, which measures the cost of goods when they leave the factory, surged 6.6 percent in February, the fastest in more than three years.

Growth rate of the overall fixed asset investment may be lower than 20 percent if the price factor was wiped off, Wang analyzed.

According to the NBS, growth rate in primary industry (farming, fishing, forestry and the like) was the fastest among industrial sectors, up by 77 percent in the January-February period, which jumped 31.1 percent for all of last year.

That compared with secondary and tertiary industries, whose investment expanded 26.1 percent and 22.6 percent, respectively.

Wang said the 77 percent surge in primary industry investment was a good sign as the government moved to shore up agricultural development plagued by the steep inflation and freaky snowstorms.

However, it is still too early to say that the government's efforts were yielding results, Wang added.

In the "No. 1 Document" published in January, the government promised to greatly increase investment in rural areas this year to promote agriculture, the rural economy and to improve the lives of the country's hundreds of millions of rural residents.

Statistics from the NBS showed, investment in projects authorized by the central government rose by 14.9 percent in the first two months over the same period of 2007. In local government-approved projects, investment expanded by 25.3 percent.

(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2008)