Developers give wrong data on assets and debts

Mainland developers, including Hong Kong-listed Evergrande Real Estate Group, have been criticised by the Ministry of Finance for providing inaccurate information about asset values and underpaid taxes.

Evergrande is among the 114 property and non-property companies that the ministry inspected last year. The inspection found that Evergrande provided inaccurate information about 6.4 billion yuan (HK$7.8 billion) of assets, 5.6 billion yuan of debts and profits of 118 million yuan in 2009. The developer also underpaid taxes of 246 million yuan, Xinhua quoted the ministry as saying.

Evergrande was also blamed for not including 57 subsidiaries in its consolidated financial statement for the year ended December 31, 2009.

Some developers reported inaccurate revenue figures, overstated costs and delayed or underpaid taxes, the ministry said.

Sino-Ocean Land and its subsidiaries have reported inaccurate information about 53.74 million of assets and inaccurate revenue of 70.63 million yuan in their financial statements in 2009.

The company underpaid taxes of 33.56 million yuan.

Evergrande yesterday admitted the mistakes, but emphasised that the firm inspected by the ministry is not the listed company.

Parry Tse, chief financial officer of Evergrande Real Estate, said the firm that was inspected was Guangzhou Evergrande, one of the listed group's 150 subsidiaries incorporated onshore and offshore.

Tse said the group's 150 units did not have separate consolidated financial statements. However, the listed firm's consolidated financial statement included all the units and had factored the holding firm's subsidiaries into its aggregated accounting figure.

The consolidated financial statement reflected the group's assets, shareholders' interests, revenues and profits, Tse said.

Evergrande shares were not hit by the news, closing up 10.227 per cent to HK$2.91 a share.

Shares of mainland property developers plunged in the past month as investors worried about their cash flows and financial health amid the slowing property market and the mainland's tighter credit environment.

SouFun Holdings, the mainland's largest property website, earlier suggested that housing sales in 20 major cities fell by an average of 32 per cent from a year ago during last week's National Day holiday - a traditional peak sales period for developers. Home prices declined slightly, as SouFun's property price index for 100 cities dipped 0.03 per cent from a month ago, for the first time in a year.

70b yuan

The full-year sales target, in yuan, of Evergrande Real Estate Group, which it said it would achieve this month