The southern Guangdong Province has wrested the title of China's number one motorcycle producer from Chongqing Municipality, the Chongqing Daily reports.

Guangdong produced 4.56 million motorcycles in 2005 while Chongqing produced 4.2 million, according to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics. China produced a total of 17 million motorcycles last year.

The southern province began to outdo Chongqing in the monthly output of motorcycles from March, and has continued to produce more every month bar June.

A dozen of medium and small-sized motorcycle manufacturers in Chongqing have gone bankrupt in the past two years due to the rise in costs, while their Guangdong counterparts have performed much better.

"The cost of each motorcycle rose about 200 yuan (25 U.S. dollars) last year," a source from the motorcycle industry said.

The price of steel increased by 1,000 to 2,000 yuan (125 to 250 U.S. dollars) per ton in the first half of 2005 and later the motorcycle industry adopted the Euro 2 emissions standard. These combined factors led to the hike in costs, the source added.

Meanwhile, some major motorcycle manufactures in Chongqing have turned to other profitable industries such as automobiles and real estate.

But some insiders in Chongqing argue that the gap in output only came about through different ways of calculation.

Editor: Yan