Shanghai's gross domestic product expanded 11.5 percent in the first quarter to 304 billion yuan (US$43.4 billion), down 1.1 percentage points from the same period last year, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau said.

The Consumer Price Index, the main gauge of inflation, increased 6.8 percent year on year through March in the city. But excluding the weight of food and energy costs, the index only rose 1.6 percent, according to a statement on the bureau's Website on late Wednesday.

"Shanghai managed to maintain stable expansion in the first quarter despite a complex and fickle economic environment in both domestic and overseas markets," said Zhen Mingxia, an analyst with the bureau.

"Shanghai strictly carried out the national macroeconomic policies and made continuous efforts to change the economic structure."

In the first quarter, output of the service industry contributed 52.3 percent to the total GDP, up 0.4 percentage point from that in 2007. It compared with the manufacturing sector's 47.2 percent and the agricultural sector's 0.5 percent in the economy.

Shanghai's fiscal revenue gained 23.8 percent to 63.8 billion yuan, with 6.7 billion yuan from individual income tax, an increase of 34.7 percent, and 11.8 billion yuan from corporate tax.

Industrial output increased 16.1 percent to 557.7 billion yuan. Six key industries – electronics, automobiles, fine steel, petrochemical processing, equipment and biomedicine – in reported a combined output of 367.3 billion yuan, up 17.1 percent from a year earlier.

But the growth of vehicles and fine steel production slowed to 14.4 percent and 3.2 percent respectively, down 15.5 percentage points and 17.5 percentage points from a year ago.

Shanghai's retail sales climbed 16.9 percent to 109.1 billion yuan through March, up 3.7 percentage points and creating a record since 1997. The sales of cars soared 43.5 percent to 6.37 billion yuan, thanks to rising salaries.

Disposable income for city dwellers rose 12.6 percent to 7,651 yuan in the first quarter and earnings for rural households increased 8.6 percent to 4,668 yuan.

By the end of March, the registered number of unemployed people stayed at 258,400, down 9,400 people from the end of last year.

(Shanghai Daily May 8, 2008)