Fixed assets may prop up economy

China's investor sentiment picked up in December despite the deceleration in the growth of the country's investment on fixed-assets, said Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing yesterday.

The overall fixed-asset investment grew 25.5 percent in 2008 year-on-year, up 0.7 percentage points from 2007.

The figure was 1.3 percentage points lower than the figure for the first 11 months of 2008 and 1.5 percentage points lesser than the first three quarters of 2008. Fixed-asset investment growth this year, however, is expected to maintain the same momentum as last year if the nation's economic stimulus packages have the desired effect, analysts said.