Property investment

CROSS-BORDER real estate investment into mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area is expected to fall as much as 33 percent in 2018, figures from Knight Frank LLP show.

House purchase controls in the larger cities may have damped developers’ appetite to bid for land, according to David Ji, Knight Frank’s head of research for China. “Limited supply of high quality commercial buildings has also played a role,” he said. The Greater Bay Area is forecast to have a GDP of US$4.6 trillion — more than Germany — by 2030, up from about US$1.5 trillion last year. Capital flowing into property investments is — at least for the time being — expected to be concentrated in tier-1 cities.

Wheat price

THE National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said Friday it had set the minimum purchasing price for wheat in 2019 at 112 yuan (US$16.14) per 50 kg, or 2,240 yuan a ton.

The price is down from this year’s 2,300 yuan per ton and the second year in a row that the government has reduced its price support for wheat growers. China made the price adjustment to help whittle down the nation’s huge grain stocks, and to push farmers to grow more high quality crops, the NDRC said Friday.

FDI rises 3.3%

FOREIGN direct investment (FDI) into China rose 3.3 percent in the first 10 months of this year to 701.16 billion yuan (US$101.10 billion) from a year earlier, China’s Ministry of Commerce said.

In October, the FDI into China increased 7.2 percent year on year to 64.46 billion yuan, the Commerce Ministry said. In the first 10 months of the year, foreign direct investment into China from the United States increased 4.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the ministry.