Sichuan Targets Eight Percent Annual GrowthSichuan Province in southwest China has set the target of an eight percent annual growth rate for its economy during the 10th five-year plan period from 2001 to 2005, governor Zhang Zhongwei told Xinhua Tuesday.Zhang, who is here attending the ongoing annual session of the Ninth National People's Congress, said the province's gross domestic product (GDP) will hit 589 billion yuan by 2005. The general goal of Sichuan is to build itself into a major economic power in western China and an ecological barrier on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River for vast regions downstream, he said. By 2005, the province will have an urbanization rate of 24 percent. Its ecological environment will see an obvious improvement, with a forest coverage of 28 percent. Disposable income for urban citizens will grow by 5.5 percent a year, and income for farmers 3.5 percent. Registered unemployment rate in urban areas will be controlled within five percent; and natural growth rate of the province's population 0.7 percent, he said. The governor stressed the importance of further developing the non-state-owned sector, accelerating economic restructuring and consolidating the role of agriculture, with priority given to increasing farmers' incomes. In the manufacturing sector, the province will speed up the development of pillar industries, which include electronics and information technology, hydropower, machine-building and metallurgy, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, and beverages and food, the governor said. |
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