The price of land in Shanghai registered a sharp rise over the past year.

Shanghai sold 151 pieces of land totaling 1,259.8 hectares last year through public bidding in 2003. The unit price, or one fifteenth of a hectare, averaged 1.05 million yuan (US$126,987), up 124 percent over the price of the previous year.

A piece of land in Luwan District was sold at a unit price of 15.27 million yuan (US$1.8 million), or 9,162 yuan for every square meter, the highest in the city.

Most of the land sold through public bidding was in the suburbs of Shanghai such as the Songjiang and Bashan areas. Over 80 percent was situated outside the outer ring of Shanghai, but land in remote counties was sold at a lower price.

Local real estate experts attributed the rise in land price to enhanced government management on land market in recent months and a new way of land supply.

The practice of public bidding in land sale will stimulate a rise in land price in the near future. But the momentum will not last for a long time with increasing supply of land for commercial residential buildings, an expert said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2004)