China will control rapid flows of bank credit to the property sector to help contain risks, the head of the country's top economic planning agency said on Sunday. This comes at a time when Beijing has pledged to contain debt and property market risks in 2017, following years of credit-fuelled expansion.
"We will control the excessive flow of credit into the real estate sector," He Lifeng, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, told the China Development Forum in Beijing.
Large amounts of capital has entered the property market, driving up property prices in first-tier cities and some second-tier cities and pushing up costs for the real economy, he said.
Data on Saturday showed China's red-hot property market picked up pace in February, after a slowdown in price gains in the previous four months.