China sees steady growth of outbound investment in first eight months of 2018

By Wang Ke from People’s Daily

China’s outbound direct investment (ODI) maintained steady growth in the first eight months of this year, said China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Gao Feng on Thursday.

Chinese investors made $74.09 billion non-financial ODI in 4,309 overseas enterprises in 153 countries and regions from January to August, the spokesperson noted. It marked an increase of 7.8 percent from a year earlier.

Gao pointed out that China has been enhancing its investment cooperation with countries and regions participating the Belt and Road construction. The country’s ODI in 55 en-route countries rose 12 percent from a year earlier to $9.58 billion.

Irrational investment has been effectively curbed, as a result of continual optimization of China’s structure of outbound investment, Gao noted.

The outbound investment mainly went to industries including leasing and business services, manufacturing, mining, and wholesale and retail.

Eastern China remained the major force of the outbound investment, and that of the three northeastern provinces including Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang registered rapid growth.

In addition, Gao introduced that the number of China’s newly established enterprises experienced huge increase during the period, with actual use of foreign capital remainingstable.

From January to August, 41,331 new foreign-invested enterprises were set up in China, up 102.7 percent year-on-year. The utilized foreign investment hit 560.43 billion yuan, growing 2.3 percent from a year ago.

In August alone, 6,092 foreign-invested enterprises were established in China, 126.8 percent more than those in the same period of 2017, noted the spokesman. The paid-in value of foreign direct investment reached 63.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 1.9 percent.