The government's moves to slow growth in housing prices have been ineffective as many major cities, including Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, all reported rapid growth this year, Shanghai Securities News reported today.

Shanghai's secondhand housing prices continued to grow in the first half of this year. Yangpu District reported 11-percent growth in the period, followed by Putuo at 10 percent, Xuhui and Changning at eight percent and Jing'an at 7.3 percent, according to Oriental Morning Post.

Shenzhen's average price for new properties rocketed 40 percent in the first half. The average price in June was 14,500 yuan (US$1,918) per square meter, compared with 10,600 yuan in January.

Zhou Xu, a researcher in Shenzhen's government-backed real estate research institution, said in an earlier report that a government policy had led to an insufficient supply in the local housing market this year, which resulted in surging demand.

The central government issued a policy on May 29, 2006, ordering that new apartments with floor space below 90 square meters should account for 70 percent of the total housing in new projects. However, most of the developers obtained the details of the policy from the Shenzhen government in September, which delayed construction of projects based on the new policy. This caused a supply shortage in the first half of the year and was responsible for skyrocketing housing prices, according to Zhou.

In Beijing, new property prices rose 10.1 percent in the first five months of 2007 from a year earlier. New apartments in Guangzhou surged 38.73 percent to 8,851 yuan per square meter last month from a year ago, according to Shanghai Securities News.

Housing prices in Chongqing, Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, and Beihai, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, also grew at a fast pace in the period, the report said.

China last year tightened credit to developers, boosted supervision over land use and improved the enforcement of tax policies to cool down a real estate boom.