Deloitte & Touche announced Wednesday the results of the survey conducted in the fourth quarter of last year among major decision makers and senior financial officers of 680 companies in Asia, Europe and North America, according to a Zhengquan Ribao (Securities Daily) report.

The survey shows that 60 percent of the companies that do not currently have China operations believe that the Chinese market will become more important to them; companies in the Asia-Pacific region are more interested in investing in China, and most of them plan to expand their business in China in the next three years; 90 percent of European companies and 80 percent of U.S. ones also plan to do so; and 76 percent of the U.S. companies say their China-investment plans have not been affected by the Sept. 11 incidents.

The report did not specify how many of the surveyed companies have China operations.

Cao Wenzheng, deputy general manager of Deloitte & Touche (Shanghai) Co., said that foreign firms are likely to slow down the pace at which they seek to go public on the Chinese stock market, especially considering that over 200 Chinese firms are queuing to get listed.

It is unlikely any foreign-invested firm will get listed in China in the near future, Cao said.

Among the 680 companies surveyed, over 10 percent, most of which are telecommunications firms and banks, plan to restructure their China operations into joint-stock companies, which will then be listed in China.

Although the government has said it would support foreign firms’ China-listing plans, the country’s securities markets can hardly absorb these large companies’ plans to raise substantial funds among domestic investors, Cao noted.

The survey shows that nearly half of the foreign-invested firms in China will expand their business through internal financing, but they will reduce foreign-currency direct investment to avoid exchange-rate risks and maximize the benefits of preferential taxation policies.

Almost two thirds of these firms plan to borrow loans from both foreign and Chinese banks since the rules governing foreign banks’ yuan loans are yet to be finalized, according to the survey.

Source: ChinaOnline

The report also said that, according to figures recently released by the Ministry of Information Industry, China's telecommunication business revenues in the first two months of this year totaled 58.99 billion yuan (US$7.1 billion). This was a 13.8 percent increase over the same period last year, reported the March 22 Renmin Youdian Bao (People's Post & Telecommunications).

China's communication businesses, which include telecommunication and postal business operations, recorded a total revenue of 66.79 billion yuan (US$8.1 billion) during the January-to-February period, a 13.5 percent increase over the same period last year. The postal business generated 7.8 billion yuan (US$942.4 million) of the total, an 11.9 percent increase over the same period last year.

China Telecommunication Group Corp.'s (China Telecom) revenue hit 29.97 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion), which was a 5.9-percent growth over that of 2001's January-to-February period. China Mobile Telecommunication Group Corp.'s business revenue reached 21.3 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion), an 11 percent increase, while China Unicom Group's revenue surged 62.4 percent to 6.6 billion yuan (US$796.2 million).

Source: ChinaOnline

Total foreign trade reached US$75.73 billion, up 8.8 percent and with a surplus of US$5.95 billion, Xinhuashe (Xinhua News Agency) reported yesterday.

Because of the Chinese New Year holiday, February's foreign trade was 5.8 percent down from that in the previous February, totaling US$35.06 billion. Exports increased 0.8 percent year on year to US$19.14 billion, while imports fell 12.7 percent to US$15.92 billion.

February's trade surplus was US$3.22 billion.

Exports through general trade grew rapidly, but imports dropped a bit. Both exports and imports through processing trade had registered healthy growth, according to Xinhuashe.

Exports to the United States gained a high margin while those to the European Union and Japan showed a weakening tendency.

Imports from China's major trading partners- Russia, Japan, the United States and the European Union - all fell, according to the customs statistics.

By the end of February, China had attracted over US$400 billion in foreign investment, Xinhuashe said in another report, citing the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC).

According to MOFTEC's figures, during the first two months of 2002, China approved 3,963 new foreign-funded businesses, 23.65 percent more than that during the same period last year.

Total contractual foreign investment reached US$11.45 billion, and actual foreign investment hit US$5.874 billion, rising 24.41 percent and 28.37 percent year on year, respectively.

China had approved 393,988 foreign-funded firms, with US$756.74 billion in contractual foreign investment and US$401.1 billion in actual foreign investment by the end of February, according to MOFTEC.

Source: ChinaOnline

The growth rate posted in January and February 2002 was also higher than the growth rate posted in the same two months of last year, according to a March 11 Zhongguo Xinwen She (China News Service) report.

During the first two months of this year, the growth rate of state-owned or state holding businesses was 9.1 percent, that of joint-stock firms was 11.9 percent, and that of foreign-invested companies, 11.5 percent, according to official statistics.

Heavy and light industries realized 11 percent and 10.9 percent growth, respectively.

Exports of industrial products grew at a healthy clip. In January and February overseas sales of such products totaled 230.25 billion yuan (US$27.81 billion), up 12.8 percent year on year. The rate of growth was 1.1 percentage points above that of a year ago.

Exports of electronic and communication equipment rose 27.4 percent , while that of electromechanical manufacturing equipment increased 13.4 percent. Exports of garments, rose 8 percent, textiles, 6.6 percent and coal, 38.3 percent, over the same period last year.

Statistics also show that industrial enterprises sold 96.01 percent of the products manufactured during the January-February period, 0.4 percentage points higher than a year ago.

Source: ChinaOnline