Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, had an inflow of US$2.55 billion of overseas investment in the first ten months of the year.

This figure is 2.7 percent more than that for the same period last year. Foreign direct investment (FDI) reached US$2.37 billion, up 7.8 percent, according to local sources.

During the same period, the city did US$11.5 billion in import and export business, up by 10.7 percent, exporting US$6.3 billion of commodities, up by 3.5 percent.

Neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region saw its inflow of overseas investment decrease by 27.8 percent from January to October from last year's comparable statistics.

But this decline is on hold, and the volume of contractual overseas investment started to climb in October as the regional government sponsored a series of investment promotion activities, said one local foreign-trade official.