The world's growing flower market offers an opportunity for China's floriculture industry, an industry analyst has said.

The global flower trade has grown significantly in the past decades.

In the 1950s, the global trade of flowers was less than 3 billion US dollars. By 1992 it had grown to 100 billion US dollars. In recent years, the industry has grown six percent annually, and global trade volume in 2003 was 101.84 billion US dollars, according to a report by the provincial government of Yunnan.

Li Gang, deputy chairman of the floristry association of Yunnan, one of China's major flower growers, said that the growing international flower market offers the Chinese floriculture industry great room to expand its business.

Li said China should boost its floriculture industry, as developing countries are becoming hubs of the world's flower production.

Emerging flower growers like Kenya, Colombia and Ecuador have become new centers of flower production in the world since the 1990s. Before that, most flowers in the world's market were from developed countries, including Japan, and western European and North America.

Li said that China, as a major flower grower, should exploit its favorable climate, rich flower varieties and abundant, cheap labor.

Source: Xinhua