Guangdong's GDP up 14.8% in 1st nine months

Guangdong Province, an economic engine in south China, managed to cool down its fixed-asset investment with a moderately rapid GDP (gross domestic product) growth in the first three quarters this year, thanks to its macro-economic control measures.

Guangdong realized 1,113 billion yuan (134 billion US dollars) in GDP for the nine-month period, a year-on-year growth of 14.8 percent, according to the provincial statistical bureau.

The total included 74.96 billion yuan (about 9 billion US dollars) in value-added output for the primary sector, up 5 percent year-on-year; 627.87 billion yuan (75.7 billion US dollars)for the secondary sector, a rise of 19.4 percent; and 410.17 billion yuan (49.4 billion US dollars) for the tertiary sector, anincrease of 10.1 percent.

Ye Jianfu, deputy director of the provincial statistical bureau,noted that growth in Guangdong's fixed-assets investment has slowed down. The province pumped 381.9 billion yuan (some 46 billion US dollars) in fixed assets between January and September,up 25.6 percent over the same

period a year earlier. But the growth rate was 15.2 percentage points lower than the first-quarter level or four percentage points lower than the year-earlier level, Ye added.

Moreover, Ye predicted the province's GDP growth would reach 14.5 percent or so for the whole of 2004.

Source: Xinhua