An official of the National Bureauof Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday that foreign direct investment to China this year is expected to exceed 50 billion US dollars, "or possibly to reach 55 billion dollars this if everything goes smoothly."
Qiu Xiaohua, deputy director of the NBS, said at a press conference that in the first nine months, the growth of foreign investment was evident, with a contracted FDI of 68.4 billion dollars, up 38.4 percent year-on-year. The actually used FDI jumped 22.6 percent to 39.6 billion dollars.
Meanwhile, the total import and export grew 18.3 percent to 445.1 billion dollars in the three quarters, with export up 19.4 percent to 232.6 billion dollars and import up 17.2 percent to 212.6 billion dollars. A trade surplus of 20 billion dollars was realized, 6.6 billion dollars more than a year earlier.
Qiu said China's export to the United States grew by 24.5 percent; to the EU, up 13.8 percent; to the ASEAN, up 27.4 percent;to Hong Kong, up 25.2 percent, to the Republic of Korea, up 19.9 percent; and to Japan, up 4.9 percent.
(Xinhua News Agency October 16, 2002)
