SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A unit of troubled property developer China Evergrande Group said construction work has resumed at 95% of Evergrande’s projects across the country as of late March.
Evergrande has resumed work at 734 developments in all of China as of March 27, including 424 projects recovering to normal construction levels, according to a post on Saturday on the official WeChat of the developer’s Pearl River Delta business unit. The post did not give a figure for Evergrande’s total number of developments.
Evergrande is the world’s most indebted property developer, with over $300 billion in liabilities. It is struggling to repay bondholders, banks, suppliers, and deliver homes to buyers, epitomising a bloated industry suffering from the Chinese government’s deleveraging campaign.
Evergrande will “continue to maintain the normal construction of the projects in order to deliver the buildings to the owners with guaranteed quality and quantity at all costs,” according to the post.
Company Chairman Hui Ka Yan has pledged multiple times since 2021 that the company would resume construction work at full steam to ensure home deliveries.
Hui told staff in February that the company aimed to deliver 600,000 apartments in 2022, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter and media reports.
“With the strong support from the provincial government, Evergrande’s Pearl River Delta business worked to accelerate the resumption of work and production,” Pearl River Delta said in the WeChat post.
(Reporting by Winni Zhou in Shanghai and Clare Jim in Hong Kong; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)