Shou Xiaoli:

Due to time constraints, we will take the last question. Housing and urban-rural development is closely related to everyone and has received widespread attention. If you do not get the opportunity to ask your question, please feel free to contact the MOHURD after the press conference. Let's give the last opportunity to this journalist in the first row.

21st Century Business Herald:

Since its establishment, the housing provident fund system has benefited more and more people with increasingly higher satisfaction. How has the system been improved? What role has it played in meeting the people's basic housing needs? Thank you.

Jiang Wanrong:

Thank you for your positive comment on our work. The housing provident fund system has indeed played a very important role. I would like to invite our spokesperson Mr. Wang Shengjun to take these questions.

Wang Shengjun:

Thank you for your questions. I'll make a brief introduction. The housing provident fund system was first launched in Shanghai in 1991 amid the urban housing reform. It is a fundraising, use and management system created to solve the housing problem for employees. Over the past decade, the system has developed steadily, benefitted larger groups of people, continued to release the system's dividends, and played an increasingly prominent role in meeting people's basic housing needs. I would like to summarize its development in three points.

First, the system pools funds for people's accommodation. Over the past decade, the coverage of the system has continuously expanded and the scale of the fund has become ever larger. The number of people who pay contributions to the fund has increased from 102 million to 164 million, the total deposits from 5 trillion yuan to 22.5 trillion yuan, and the fund balance from 2.68 trillion yuan to 8.18 trillion yuan. Last year, employees in the non-public sector accounted for 52.1% of all those who contributed to the fund. Meanwhile, over 1 million workers in flexible employment participated in the system. We also encourage our fellow compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan who are working on the Chinese mainland to contribute to and use the housing provident fund. 

Second, the system provides convenient services for the people. We support both renting and buying to solve the housing problem for the people. In the past decade, 12.44 trillion yuan were withdrawn from the housing provident fund; 27.36 million individual housing loans were issued, totaling 10.28 trillion yuan, of which more than 80% were first-home loans. In addition, 341 municipal housing provident fund management centers have set up platforms enabling trans-provincial, off-site, and round-the-clock services. A national platform for the transfer and continuation of the housing provident fund has been launched to help employees transfer their accounts and continue contributing despite movement across the country. We have handled a total of 4.19 million housing provident fund transfers and continuations, with an amount exceeding 100 billion yuan. In May last year, the national housing provident fund mini-app was launched, which has provided individual housing provident fund information inquiry services to more than 67 million depositors.

Third, the system helps guard against risks and protects employee's savings through transparent operation. Using the internet plus regulation model, we have improved the national housing provident fund regulation and service platform, which enables online real-time regulation and established an impregnable risk prevention system combining internal risk control and external regulation and connecting online inspection with offline verification and disposal. Since 2015, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and the People's Bank of China, we have released the previous year's national housing provident fund "account book" to the public every year, and local housing provident fund management centers have also disclosed the annual housing provident fund bills within their jurisdictions through various channels.

The housing provident fund, with saving as the basis and fund at the core, is designed to ensure people's accommodation. Going forward, we will continue to innovate and develop the system to sustain its benefits for both employers and employees and better meet the people's housing needs. Thank you.

Shou Xiaoli:

Thank you to Mr. Jiang and all the other speakers. Thank you to friends from the media. That's all for today's press conference.

Translated and edited by Wang Yiming, Zhang Liying, Cui Can, Wang Yanfang, Qin Qi, Huang Shan, Xu Kailin, Zhou Jing, Zhang Rui, Liu Sitong, He Shan, Lin Liyao, Ma Yujia, Xu Xiaoxuan, Yuan Fang, Yan Bin, Duan Yaying, Li Huiru, David Ball, Jay Birbeck, and Tom Arnstein. In case of any discrepancy between the English and Chinese texts, the Chinese version is deemed to prevail.