Foreign investment involved a total contractual value of US$813 million, 93 percent more than the figure a year ago.

The government of Shaanxi also approved 3,532 foreign-funded firms with contractual investment of more than US$7.4 billion. Twenty-two of the top 500 multinationals in the world have opened branches in the province.

Shaanxi's imports and exports in the first seven months were worth a total of US$1.2 billion, a 5 percent rise compared with the same period last year.

Local firms signed engineering and labor service contracts with other countries worth US$69 million in the first seven months of 2002, some 72 percent of the annual target.

Meanwhile, fixed assets investment in the first seven months of this year has reached 30.1 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion), up 17 percent over the same period last year.

The increase was mainly due to the construction of more infrastructure projects, a provincial government official said.

The January-July period saw the construction of 998 new infrastructure projects, a 30-percent rise over the same period last year. They involved a total investment of 20.4 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion), up 22.6 percent. Major projects included the Xianyang International Airport and several highways.

The province's investment in the real estate sector totaled 4.7billion yuan (US$576 million), a year-on-year increase of 44 percent.

The service trade saw investment of 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion), up 14 percent, while the manufacturing industry drew investment of 3.2 billion yuan, 25 percent more thanthe figure a year ago.

(china.org.cn October 8, 2002)