" GENEVA Womens Mike McGlinchey Jersey , March 9 (Xinhua) -- UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said Wednesday that Syria talks scheduled to start today will take place on a staggered basis, with people involved in UN-backed discussions arriving up until the end of the week so as to start substantive talks by March 14.
""The good thing about proximity talks is that I am in a positon of staggering the talks, the dates, the days, the meeting rooms based on where and how they will be most fruitful. Any type of delay that I may decide to take will be based on how to make them more successful,"" he explained.
""We plan to start having informal talks already in hotels or here with whoever is arriving but the substantive, deeper part of it after the first preparation will be on Monday, god willing, the fourteenth,"" the special envoy added.
De Mistura also said that the first stage of talks will not last beyond March 24, after which a short recess will take place before discussions aiming to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis resume.
UN-led talks involving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and opposition forces came to a premature standstill on Feb. 3 after parties failed to see eye to eye on a number of issues.
Since then, much progress has been made on both the humanitarian and cessation of hostilities front in the country at war since 2011.
Implemented almost two weeks ago pursuant to an agreement adhered to by 97 armed groups and the Syrian government and backed by regional and international powers, the cessation of hostilities has largely held despite a number of incidents.
This in turn has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian assistance to people living in hard-to-reach areas, including besieged towns.
To date, De Mistura reported that 536 trucks have provided 238,485 Syrians with life-saving aid.
These issues are not expected to be addressed during the talks however, as proximity discussions will focus on new governance, constitutional change and presidential and parliamentarian elections.
Though much has been said regarding the looming two-week mark since the cessation of hostilities began, De Mistura maintained that a deadline had never been part of the deal from an international standpoint.
""From the UN point of view, the Geneva taskforce meetings we have been having and certainly the Munich understanding, there was an open-ended concept regarding the cessation of hostilities,"" he concluded.
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" Chinese homebuyers look at housing models of a residential property project during a real estate fair in Huaian, East China's Jiangsu Province, in September 2016. Photo: IC
China's central bank governor said Thursday that he had noticed the recent rapid increase in housing prices in some Chinese cities, and said the central government attached great importance to the matter and will actively take measures to ensure the sound development of the housing sector.
Experts said the governor's words may signal a gradual policy shift that would curb credit risks in the property sector and prevent a bubble from forming.
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, made the remarks at a meeting of G20 central bank governors and finance ministers in Washington, US, on Thursday, according to a statement released by the central bank on its official website on Saturday.
In an effort to prevent housing prices from rising too quickly, about 20 Chinese cities - including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province, Suzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province, Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province and Wuhan in Central China's Hubei Province - issued new policies restricting property purchases and mortgage down payments during China's week-long National Day holidays, which ended Friday.
At the G20 meeting, Zhou said that amid the gradual recovery of the global economy, China will control credit growth.
Yan Yuejin, research director at E-house China R&D Institute, said that Zhou could be signaling a tightening of credit growth.
"A tightening would allow ordinary housing demand to be sustained, in that it would channel precious credit into the hands of those who really need it. And at the same time, it could contain speculative demand. The two aspects would both be positive for the economy," Yan told the Global Times on Saturday
Experts said the housing sector plays an important part in the Chinese economy, affecting industries from cement and steel to furniture. But rapid growth in housing loans also builds up credit risks for China's banking system.
Zhang Ning, a research fellow with the National Academy of Economic Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Saturday that Zhou's remarks reflected a judgment by top Chinese officials regarding the country's macroeconomic situation.
"With a stabilizing economy and a stabilizing financial market, China is now in a position to control credit growth and liquidity and can even moderately tighten its monetary policy. The overheated real estate markets in some Chinese cities in the first half of 2016 also provide a reason for such a move," Zhang said.
Slow it down
China has seen rapid credit growth recently. New yuan-denominated lending in August more than doubled from the month before to 948.7 billion yuan ($145.95 billion), with mortgages representing 55.7 percent of the 529 billion yuan that went toward household loans, the Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday, citing central bank data.
According to a report published on August 31 by the 21st Century Business Herald, which studied the interim reports of 15 listed Chinese banks, housing mortgages accounted for over 2 trillion yuan or 46.58 percent of all the new loans granted in the first half of 2016. In 2015, the figure was just 31.54 percent, the report said.
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22.08.2018 05:47
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