China's GDP zooms 9.5% in '04

China's gross domestic product soared to 13.65 trillion yuan ($1.65 trillion in 2004, an impressive growth of 9.5 per cent year on year, the government said in Beijing on Tuesday.

Releasing the preliminary statistics, the director of the National Bureau of Statistics, Li Deshui said that the added value of primary industry rose 6.3 per cent to 2.07 trillion yuan (about $250 billion) last year.

The secondary and tertiary industries grew 11.1 and 8.3 per cent last year to 7.24 trillion yuan ($874.4 billion) and 4.34 trillion yuan ($524.15 billion), respectively, he said.

Li said that the country achieved "tangible" results in cementing and improving macro-control and curbed "unhealthy and unstable" factors in the economy last year, which had posed serious problems.

The national economy maintained a stable and relatively fast growth trend, avoiding a roller-coaster, he noted.

China's foreign trade in 2004 soared to $1154.7 billion, up 35.7 per cent over the previous year. The value of exports was $593.4 billion, up 35.4 per cent.

The imports rose to $561.4 billion, up 36 per cent. China enjoyed a healthy trade surplus of $32 billion last year or $6.5 billion more than in 2003.

China recorded 6.2815 trillion yuan ($766 billion) in its overall added industrial value last year, up 11.5 per cent year-on-year, while its total investment in fixed assets grew by 25.8 per cent, down by 1.9 percentage points from 2003.

The total profit for China's industrial sector stood at 1.1342 trillion yuan ($138.3 billion), up 38.1 per cent.

The bureau said that investment in fixed assets totalled 7.0073 trillion yuan (about $854.5 billion), up 25.8 percent year-on-year, or a drop of 1.9 percentage points from the previous year.

China's total grain output in 2004 reached 469.5 million tonnes, a hefty increase of 38.8 million tonnes or 9.0 per cent over the previous year.

Both total grain production and average yield of cereals crops in 2004 went an all time high, Li said, adding that the average per-hectare grain yield was 4,620 kg up 6.6 per cent.

The consumer prices in 2004 were up by 3.9 per cent over the previous year, or 2.7 percentage points higher than in 2003, which was mostly caused by the lagging effect of price increase in 2003, he said.

Li said that in 2005, China hopes to maintain a steady economic growth but would remain alert against unstable tendencies, which might again pose some problems for the healthy growth of the economy of the world's most populous nation.