Business
Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Shanghai: Foreign-funded enterprises earn record profits
Some 30,000 foreign-funded enterprises in China's largest city of Shanghai earned record profits of 43.7 billion yuan (5.26 billion US dollars) from sales revenue of 720 billion yuan (86.7 billion US dollars) last year, doubling the amount of three years ago.
Encouraged by the hefty profits and gradually improved environment for investment in the city, foreign enterprises have continuously increased investment there. In 2003 new contracted investment reached 3.81 billion US dollars while a record 5.85 billion US dollars was utilized.
Shanghai now is regarded as a "bridgehead" to enter into the Chinese market for strategic investment by many foreign-funded enterprises.
While gaining profits, the foreign-funded enterprises also made a great contribution to local economic and social development.
Statistics showed that the enterprises reported exports of 30.8billion US dollars, making up 63.6 percent of the city's total, and paid 30 billion yuan (3.61 billion US dollars) in taxes to the local government last year, while employing 1.25 million of local staff during the same period.
Source: Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved