Shanghai authorities on Friday announced plans to launch regular land tendering activities in a move to further open up land use approval and regulate the local real estate market.

"We will hold land use tendering conferences regularly, hopefully once a month," said Shanghai Vice-Mayor Yang Xiong at a government-organized housing land tendering conference on Friday.

"We aim to create an open and fair business environment for real estate developers."

In addition to using land for housing, other areas of commercial land use include large industrial projects, entertainment and tourism. Public bidding for land will be opened up through the regular tendering conferences, he said.

The city government unveiled another 38 pieces of land at Friday's conference, totaling 371 hectares, for open bidding.

All of these properties, mainly located around the city's Outer Ring Road in the Pudong District, will be used for real estate projects and the bidding results will be disclosed on September 29.

The city government announced plans to build 3 million square meters of medium- and low-cost apartments annually over the next three years for people to be relocated to make way for some key infrastructure construction projects, according to Yang.

The apartments will be priced between 3,000 yuan (US$360) and 3,500 yuan per square meter, lower than the city's average housing price of 4,700 yuan.

Since last July, the Ministry of Land Resources has required all land for commercial use to be leased through open bidding. The Shanghai municipal government began using open bidding on July 1, 2001.

To cope with possible bribery or under-the-table land-leasing activities, the Shanghai Supervision Commission and the Shanghai Housing and Land Administrative Bureau jointly started an inquiry in May reviewing all land leasing contracts signed after May 1, 2001.

(China Daily July 26, 2003)