The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Xiamen city of east China's Fujian province reached 103 billion yuan (about 12.4 billion U.S. dollars), a rise of 16 percent over the previous year, said an official with the Xiamen city government.

Ouyang Jian, head of United Front Work Department of the China Xiamen municipal committee of the Communist Party (CPC), said on Monday that the fiscal income of Xiamen reached 20.6 billion yuan (about 2.5 billion U.S.dollars) with an increase of 17.5 percent over the previous year.

Xiamen attracted foreign investment of 1.25 billion U.S. dollars by contract and actually used 670 million U.S. dollars actually, an increase of 18.5 percent and 17.5 percent, respectively, he said.

He Lifeng, secretary of the Xiamen CPC municipal committee, said that since Xiamen started to turn itself into a special economic zone two decades ago, the city has made remarkable progress by having allured 23.09 billion U.S. dollars of foreign investment.

Thirty six of the world's top 500 companies including DELL and KODAK invested in 64 projects in Xiamen.

"Investment from overseas has contributed nearly 70 percent to the increase of the city's economy," said He.

Xiamen has also forged economic cooperation with more than 180 countries and regions all over the world.

The port of Xiamen handled 3.34 million TEU containers in 2005, ranking as the country's seventh largest, said He.

Source: Xinhua