BEIJING - Housing prices are unlikely to drop this year despite tightening measures adopted by the government to cool the property market, a top think tank and senior economists said on Wednesday.

The annual report on the state of the real estate industry released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences warned that rocketing housing prices have become the biggest obstacle to the healthy development of the sector.

But Wang Juelin, deputy director of the policy research center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said he does not expect housing prices to decline drastically this year after dramatic increases in the latter half of last year.