China's export trade volume this year will reach a five percent growth rate over last year, said Shi Guangsheng, the minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation at a National Conference on Foreign Trade in Beijing on December 22.

The export trade growth rate will also exceed the average growth of global trade this year, Shi said. China's export trade volume started to steadily rise in July and gathered momentum in the following months.

Statistics from customs revealed that China's total volume for import and export reached 323 billion US dollars during the first 11 months, a 12.7 percent increase from the same period last year.

From January to November, the export volume totaled 174.7 billion US dollars with a 6.6 percent increase, while the import volume rose by 20.9 percent to reach 148.3 billion US dollars.

Shi said that China had attracted a total of 608.16 billion US dollars in contractual foreign investment by the end of November 1999 and China actually used 304.45 billion US dollars in foreign investment up till the end of November.

This year, foreign investment influx is projected to reach or surpass 38 billion US dollars, a slight decrease from that of last year but "still a considerable increase", said the minister.

The year 1999 also saw stable development in overseas contracted projects and labor service cooperation, with the total contractual value reaching 10.27 billion US dollars from January to November, up 2.1 percent year-on-year, and 8.79 billion US dollars in revenue, up 6.7 percent, Shi added.