Foreign direct investment (FDI) China had used grew by 11.34 percent year on year to 25.91 billion US dollars in the first five months of 2004, when foreign-funded companies performed well, a senior commercial official said Wednesday.

Vice Minister of Commerce Ma Xiuhong told a press conference China's FDI structure was further optimized, citing that the service sector attracted more investment, foreign investors showed greater interest in high-tech industries and research and development centers, and the growth of FDI in central and west China, as well as the old industrial base in northeast China, was very fast, though east China still took away more than 85 percent of the total FDI.

In the five months, China approved the setting up of 17,359 foreign-funded enterprises which involved 57.24 billion US dollars of contractual foreign investment, up 14.39 percent and 49.76 percent respectively.

To date, the number of foreign-funded enterprises in China reached 482,636, and the amount of contractual and actually-used foreign investment stood at 100.037 billion and 527.38 billion US dollars respectively.

According to Ma, foreign-funded enterprises operating in China generated a combined industrial added value of 314.27 billion yuan (37.9 billion US dollars) in the first quarter of this year, rising by 21.1 percent year on year and accounting for 27.77 percent of the national total.

From January to May, the foreign-funded enterprises exported 119.04 billion US dollars worth of goods, up 41.78 percent year on year and accounting for 57.34 percent of China's total.

Despite the robust growth, Ma admitted that the Ministry of Commerce still faced the challenges of how to bring into full play China's advantages to lure more cross-border direct investment and how to make FDI cater better to the demand of domestic economic development.

Source: Xinhua