SHANGHAI – Urban administration officials in Nanjing said the notion that the the city plans to spend nearly 100 million yuan ($15.54 million) to replace all of its road signs is a misunderstanding.

That statement came after the high cost of the project began to arouse doubts among the public.

The Nanjing Urban Administration Bureau denied that replacing the signs will cost 100 million yuan and said that it has not yet formulated a budget for the work. Whatever budget is adopted will be influenced by both the public's reaction to the plans and by the results of a third-party audit, the Nanjing-based Yangtse Evening Post reported on Monday.

According to a news report by China News Agency on Sunday, the provincial capital of East China's Jiangsu province has spent 980,000 yuan to replace more than 320 road signs so far, meaning that the cost of each sign has exceeded 3,000 yuan.

The report put the cost of replacing all of the city's 30,792 road signs at nearly 100 million yuan.

The project is scheduled to be completed before the Second Youth Olympic Games which will take place in Nanjing in 2014.

In response to the plans, Xi Hui, head of the bureau's urban facilities management department, said the true cost for replacing the first 327 road signs was 913,000 yuan – coming to 2,792 yuan each. That paid for the production, installation and maintenance expenses. Those figures, though, will not be considered official until they have been audited by a third party.

Xi explained that the project is meant to improve the city's appearance.

The high cost of the road signs, though, has aroused doubts among Nanjing citizens and Internet users. In a vote initiated by a news program on the Public Channel of the Jiangsu Broadcasting Corpon and posted on Sina weibo, a microblogging website similar to Twitter, 83 percent among the 162 respondents to the survey said the city's current signs are good enough and there is no need to replace them.

"It's OK to put up new road signs on newly constructed roads or replace ones that say things that are incorrect," said Chen Cheng, a Nanjing citizen who works at a local university. "But I don't think it's necessary to replace all of them."

"And 3,000 yuan is obviously too expensive for a single road sign," she said. "I would suggest that authorities control the cost and make sure no corruption occurs during the replacement project."

Just a week ago, a widely spread online post said that the Nanjing government was going to spend 100 million yuan to paint the roofs of all buildings in the city a single color. The project was to be undertaken in consequence of a high official's saying he was not satisfied with the rather drab views seen from the Greenland Square Zifeng Tower, one of the city's landmarks.

Zhu Xianrong, a spokesman with the city's real estate bureau, immediately denied that rumor and told Yangtse Evening Post that local officials plan to renovate the roofs of 100 building near the tower rather than paint every roof in the city the same color.

Zhu said the cost of the project will be kept to between 30 million and 50 million yuan.

Deng Haijian, a news commentator, asked in article in the Beijing News why both road signs and roofs are in such need of being replaced and renovated just before the Youth Olympic Games.

"Don't do things that aren't unnecessary for a mere sports game," he wrote, adding that the government should always respect public opinion.