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China grows by 10.9 per cent

GDP reaches $1.14 trillion

BEIJING: China's economy grew a year-on-year 10.9 per cent in the first half of 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed on Tuesday, roaring ahead despite a slew of measures imposed by the Government to ease investment growth.

The Gross Domestic Product between January and June reached 9.14 trillion yuan ($1.14 trillion), NBS spokesman Zheng Jingping told a press conference in Beijing.

China's macro-economy presents ``obvious overheating of investment'' in the first half of this year, Wang Xiaoguang, a macro-economics professor at the Economic Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, told Xinhua.

Surging demand

The NBS said the total investment in roads, factory equipment and other fixed assets soared 29.8 per cent, an increase of 4.4 percentage points from the same period of last year.

``The overheating is all-round, in nearly all industries and all regions of the country,'' Mr. Wang said, urging the Government to tighten macro-control to check the trend.

According to the NBS, the investment in urban areas in the past six months reached 3,636.8 billion yuan, increasing 31.3 per cent or 4.2 percentage points higher, the highest growth since the second half year of 2004.

Stimulated by the surging housing demand, the total investment in the real estate sector increased by 24.2 per cent, or 0.7 percentage point higher over the same period last year.

In terms of different industries, the investment in heavy industry was up by 32.6 per cent, of which the year-on-year growth of investment in coal mining and washing was a record high of 45.7 per cent.

The country's soaring demand for energy resources drives the investment in extraction of petroleum and natural gas up 30.3 per cent in the first half of this year, and investment in production and supply of electricity, gas and water went up by 17.5 per cent.

While stimulated by the booming economic growth, the investment in railway transportation, the main vehicle to transport production materials in China, surged 87.6 per cent in the first half of this year. — Xinhua

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