China's export this year is expected to increase by five percent, or 9.2 billion US dollars, from last year, a senior trade official said in Beijing on December 24.

The projected export growth means an increase of nearly 80 billion yuan in China's gross domestic product and a creation of 1. 1 million job opportunities, said Sun Zhenyu, deputy minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation.

According to him, the value of export products delivered by industrial enterprises nationwide in the January-November period shot up 13.7 percent from a year earlier, 4.7 percentage points higher than the growth rate for the nation's industrial output value during the same period.

This has given a strong impetus to the country's industrial production, Sun said at a national conference on foreign trade and economic cooperation, which ended here today.

The amount of foreign capital flowing into China this year is estimated at 38 billion US dollars, worth a total investment of more than 314 billion yuan, he said, adding that the role of foreign capital to help China's economic growth could never be underestimated.

Sun said that the expansion in foreign trade and overseas investment has directly led to an increase in tax incomes, citing the latest statistics, which show that China's income from export and import duties for the first 11 months this year amounted to 142 billion yuan, up nearly 90 percent on an annual basis.

The increase in export and foreign capital influx also has contributed to the growth in China's foreign exchange reserve, which stood at 153.77 billion US dollars by the end of November, 8.81 billion US dollars more than the figure at the end of last year.

The deputy minister said the major task in promoting foreign trade next year will remain to be focusing on increasing exports, and attracting more overseas investment, with the export growth rate kept not lower than this year's level.

Efforts are also needed to attract more foreign capital next year than this year and to promote the development of foreign contracted projects, labor service cooperation as well as Chinese- invested projects abroad.

Sun pointed out that China will continue to crackdown on all illegal activities in the field of foreign trade and economic cooperation, especially those related to taxes and foreign exchange.

He vowed to launch severe penalty measures on criminals and companies in strict accordance with the law, saying that enterprises engaged in such illegal activities will have their import and export autonomy revoked.