Shanghai's Per-capita GDP Ranks at World Medium Level

A news conference held by the Information Office of Shanghai Municipal Government February 5 said that Shanghai's GDP in the year 2000 reached RMB 455.115bn, 10.8 percent up than 1999 in terms of fixed price. And Shanghai's average GDP growth rate reached 11.4 percent during the Ninth Five-year Plan Period.

Pan Jianxin, director general of the Shanghai Statistical Bureau, said at the conference that Shanghai's per-capita GDP was RMB 34,600 (equivalent to US$4,180) in that year, ranking at the world medium level.

The motive force for economic growth came from the four factors listed as follows:

1. Economic structure: Shanghai's economic growth invigorated by the secondary and tertiary industries was further strengthened after years of structure adjustment. The growth rate of the tertiary industry, bellwether of all industries in economic growth, was 1.2 percentage points higher than Shanghai's average level, and its GDP proportion rose to 50.2 percent from 49.6 in 1999;

2. SOE reform: In 2000, Shanghai has made great efforts in the reform of state-owned enterprises that led them to make profits instead of suffering losses. And the deficit rate among large-and-medium-sized SOEs in Shanghai reduced to 14.4 percent in 2000, a drop of 6.1 percentage points;

3. Technological improvement: Shanghai laid its stress on technical innovation in 2000 and the overall production value of the hi-tech industry reached RMB 142.7bn, accounting for 20.6 percent of all industries, and up 2.4 percentage points than 1999;

4. Infrastructure construction: A large batch of functional facilities, including the main project of the Information Port, 1st-phase project of the No.2 Metro and the 1st-phase project of the Mingzhu Line, were completed for generating economic benefits.

In view of the exterior situation aside from the aforesaid, the warm-up of economic environment and dispelling of influences of the Asian financial crisis have helped speed an overall development of economy in Shanghai. According to local customs, Shanghai's foreign trade exports in 2000 reached US$25.354bn, a boom of 35 percent.



By PD Online staff Huang Ying


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