2010-12-15 13:52

BEIJING - The proportion of Chinese citizens satisfied with price levels has sunk to an 11-year low despite government efforts to rein in prices, the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, said Wednesday.

The central bank conducted the 20,000-respondent survey during the fourth quarter in 50 cities across China.

The Residents' Price Satisfaction Index fell to 13.8 percent -- the lowest since the fourth quarter of 1999, when the quarterly survey began -- according to a statement published on the PBOC website.

Some 73.9 percent of respondents said current prices are "too high to be acceptable," up 15.6 percentage points from the third quarter, while 61.4 percent said they expect prices to continue to rise into the next quarter.

China's consumer price index (CPI), the major gauge of inflation, hit a 28-month high by rising 5.1 percent year-on-year in November, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Saturday.

Some 75.5 percent of respondents said the current price of property is too high to accept, the highest since the central bank started the survey on home prices in 2009.

Some 43.3 percent of respondents said property prices will continue to rise, up 6.8 percentage points from a quarter earlier.

Property prices in China's major cities rose 0.3 percent in November from October, even though the government has rolled out measures to cool the market, the NBS said Friday.

"The cautious consumer sentiment reveals Chinese residents are not optimistic about future adjustments in price levels, which is not conducive to consumption expansion," the PBOC report said.

Some 45.2 percent of respondents said they intend to invest more for the future, with 37.6 percent willing to deposit their money in banks.

Only 17.3 percent of respondents said they intend to consume more.