BEIJING - China's fixed asset investment rose 25.6 percent year-on-year to 12.46 trillion yuan ($1.93 trillion) in the first half of this year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Wednesday.

The growth rate was 0.2 percentage points lower than that during the Jan-May period.

In June, fixed asset investment fell 1.04 percent from May.

Investment in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries rose 20.6 percent, 27.1 percent and 24.7 percent from one year earlier, respectively, during the first half.

Furthermore, investment in the nation's property sector rose 32.9 percent year-on-year to reach 2.63 trillion yuan -- of which 1.86 trillion yuan went into residential housing, an increase of 36.1 percent from the same period last year.

Floor space transactions of commercial housing climbed 12.9 percent year-on-year to 444.19 million square meters during the first half.

The excessively rapid rise in housing prices has been suppressed and the speculative demand has been curbed. Month-on-month gains in housing prices subsided in most Chinese cities during the first half, said NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun.

China adopted a series of tightening measures earlier this year, including raising minimum down payments for second-home purchases, limiting purchases of new homes and introducing property taxes in the cities of Shanghai and Chongqing, in order to keep housing prices down.