The State Council has issued new measures to rein in property prices and eliminate speculation in the housing market. The measures reflect the determination of the central government to solve the housing problem and promote healthy development of the property market, says an article in People's Daily. Excerpts:

The central government has adopted measures since the beginning of last year to check property prices.

Its previous measures succeeded, to a certain extent, in curbing prices. The new measures, issued last week, are harsher and expected to check rising prices further.

But the effects of the new measures should not be overestimated, because the statistics show that the number of houses sold and housing prices both increased over the last two months.

Local governments have to pay greater attention to the changes in the property market, make timely analysis and adopt measures suited to local conditions to curb property prices.

From the macroeconomic point of view, the pressure of rising prices is still immense. Since China is still undergoing rapid urbanization, many among the floating population want to buy a house. Therefore, people hope the new control policies would be more effective.

Authorities should not only implement better control measures, but also intensify their research on the subject. And they need to issue stronger policies to perfect the measures to control property prices.

Besides, they have to expedite housing reform and implement pilot projects for housing tax to consolidate their achievements and stabilize the housing market.

(China Daily 01/31/2011 page9)