Shanghai’s economy continued to grow steadily in November, figures issued by the city’s statistics bureau yesterday showed.

Trade expanded 8.8 percent from a year earlier to US$40.1 billion last month, up from the pace of 6.8 percent in October, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau said.

The acceleration was supported by strong imports, which jumped 13.1 percent, while exports rose 4.5 percent.

Industrial production increased 8.6 percent from a year earlier to 282.9 billion yuan (US$46 billion) last month, also faster than October’s 8.1 percent.

But fixed-asset investment growth moderated to 8.3 percent in the first 11 months, down from the 9.5 percent pace of the first 10 months.

“Shanghai’s economy maintained a stable performance,” said Xue Jun, an analyst at CITIC Securities Co. “With modest inflationary pressure, Shanghai has a comfortable environment to push forward economic restructuring and reform.”

The Consumer Price Index, the main gauge of inflation, increased 2.4 percent last month, compared with October’s 2.6 percent and November’s national average of 3 percent.

Xue said that though the city might be behind others in absolute growth rates, it was successful in shifting focus to the quality of growth through economic upgrading.

According to a ranking released earlier this month by the China Institute of City Competitiveness, Shanghai overtook Hong Kong to become China’s most competitive city, mainly due to the pilot free trade zone.

Shanghai also led other Chinese cities in economic restructuring in terms of speed of transformation, innovation capability and social harmony, according to a survey by the statistics bureau.

The city’s pilot free trade zone program is its latest economic restructuring effort. The program is a national strategy designed to accelerate reform and opening up.

Experiments including easing restrictions on foreign investment, further opening up the service sector and deepening financial reforms are being tested in the area.

With 0.06 percent of China’s land, 1.8 percent of its population and 1.7 percent of its investment, Shanghai produced more than 4 percent of the nation’s economic output.