China land sales drop

Bloomberg

Sales fell to about 960 billion yuan ($140 billion) from about 1.2 trillion yuan a year earlier, the Shanghai-based newspaper said. Local governments rely on income from land sales for infrastructure projects, according to the report. Investment growth for real-estate development slowed to 22.7 percent in the first 11 months of 2008 from a year earlier after gaining 24.6 percent through October, a government report showed last month.