The event, which ended yesterday, achieved a staggering US$16.85 billion in investment, an increase of 26.7 percent over last year.

"At this session, the European Union (EU) and the United States are still the two biggest buyers, whose volumes of business with our exhibitors are 27.4 percent and 15.5 percent of the total respectively," said Hu Chusheng, director-general of the China Foreign Trade Centre, at a press conference yesterday.

The fair has been held in April and October every year since 1957 and is organized by the trade centre.

Hu particularly said purchases from buyers from the Middle East increased by more than 160 percent compared with the last session of the fair.

Chinese labour-intensive products, textiles and clothing, products from light industries and mechanical and electronic equipment constituted the bulk of the export volume.

However, because of EU restrictions on imports of Chinese seafood, the export volume of seafood and livestock products dropped by about 6 percent compared with the 90th session.

The director-general said that whilst local foreign trade companies were still the main force of the business, private and township-run enterprises played a very active role at this session.

Only 33 township enterprises attended the last session, while this fair attracted about 141 township enterprises. Such businesses' exports increased at this fair by some 66 percent.

Exhibitors from local foreign trade companies contributed more than 61 per cent to the total export volume.

With more than 21 percent of the total export volume, Guangdong Province ranked first among all participating provinces. Provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong were the other three main sources of business at the 91st fair.

At a press conference, Hu said the record export volume showed that the initiative of dividing the export commodities fair into two phases was very beneficial to the exhibitors.

"Being held in two phases, the 91st session of the fair achieves a larger area of space with 310,000-square metres of exhibition area and 15,679 booths, both of which have nearly doubled since the last session," Hu said.

"New exhibitors who could not rent booths before because of a lack of space were able to obtain a booth this time," the director-general said.

This is the first time that the trade centre fair has been divided into two separate six-day phases rather than 12 continuous days.

Hu added that the division of the session also speeded up business between exhibitors and foreign buyers.

( China Daily May 1, 2002)