Fujian province, east China remains the "greenest" province in the country with a forestry coverage of 62.9 percent, according to the latest national survey of forest resources.

The figure, revealed for the first time, is 2.4 percent higher than that of last year, said Provincial Governor Lu Zhangong at a forestry meeting on Wednesday.

The province, covering a land area of 12 million hectares, has witnessed an average annual growth of one percent for forestry coverage over the past 25 years and its forested land has reached 7.5 million hectares, according to the survey.

"The oxygen produced by the forests in our province can cope with the need of some 400 million people, a dozen times our present population," acknowledged Lu, who added that the per capita urban greenland has risen to 7.7 square meters so far from the 5.6 square meters 10 years ago.

The province's untiring tree-planting efforts have paid off. The best example is that the average life-span of the residents in Fujian is in the front rank in China.

Benefiting from the rich forest resources, Fujian also has become the country's major producer of wood, bamboo, firewood, paper pulp, furniture and resin and it reported a forestry production value of 6.8 billion US dollars in 2003.

In addition, the booming development of forestry industry has drawn over 420 foreign firms to invest in Fujian since 1996 and the foreign trade volume on forest products has reached 5.4 billion US dollars, according to the provincial forestry department.

Source: Xinhua