Geely Automobile, a major private carmaker in China, sold 11,236 cars in July, a growth of 34.6 percent over the same month of last year, company sources said on Saturday.

However, the company's sales in the first seven months of this year went down 4.7 percent to 95,623 cars, which accounted for only 40 percent of its annual sales target of 240,000.

The sources said the Hong Kong-listed company received a record of nearly 30,000 orders in June, but the delivery had to be postponed partly because of the limited production capacity of its workshops in Ningbo, east China's Zhejiang Province.

The company has to speed up production in the rest months as the demand for some models is expected to increase, company sources said, adding the Ningbo production facilities will be expanded.

(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2007)