BEIJING - China's Ministry of Land and Resources, or MLR, said Saturday that the country's local governments sold 322,800 hectares of land to be used for construction in 2012, down 3.3 percent from 2011.

Total value of the sales contracts dipped 14.7 percent year-on-year to 2.69 trillion yuan ($431 billion), with 2.55 trillion yuan of deals closed through market-oriented means including auctions and biddings, the MLR said in an annual report on national land resources.

By the end of 2012, total acreage of mortgaged land in 84 major Chinese cities reached 348,700 hectares, up 15.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the report.

By the same time, the average price of residential land in 105 major cities stood at 4,620 yuan per square meter, up 2.3 percent year-on-year.

The MLR report also showed the amount of newly approved land for construction in 2012 rose 0.6 percent from the previous year to 615,200 hectares..

The country allocated 160,000 hectares of land for real estate construction last year.