A national housing quality assessment system will be raised when the Ministry of Construction (MOC) issues a new state standard next year.

Tong Yuezhong, deputy director of the MOC housing industrialization promotion center, said here Tuesday that the current MOC housing quality assessment system, started on a trial basis in 1999, had been adopted as China's first national standard.

The international housing quality assessment system was initiated in France shortly after the Second World War, and was soon adopted by most European and American countries.

Tong said the MOC issued China's first regulation on commercial housing quality assessment in 1999, aiming at promoting housing reform, which was launched in 1998.

The MOC housing quality assessment system includes more than 380 items concerning five major features on housing quality, granting all qualified housing programs the rating of "A", "AA", or "AAA".

The system helped homebuyers with reliable housing assessments and provided developers with technical guidance, Tong noted.

The MOC says that the current housing quality assessment system is supported by the public. One of the country's four state commercial banks, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, had decided that all housing programs that passed the MOC housing quality assessment had priority for loans.

Insurance giant the People's Insurance Company of China also decided to launch a kind of quality insurance with all homes that passed the MOC housing quality assessment.

The MOC housing quality assessment system has been adopted in most Chinese cities, and thousands of buildings have passed the assessment.

(Xinhua News Agency November 12, 2003)