South China's Guangdong Province, one of the country's economic powerhouses, has set a GDP goal of 9 percent increase this year as compared with last year.

In the government work report to the annual session of Guangdong Provincial People's Congress, which ended yesterday in Guangzhou, Governor Huang Huahua said that Guangdong would continue to improve investment environment, promote innovation and optimize industrial structure to meet the goal.

"Lower resource and energy consumption, lower pollution, high-speed economic growth...that was what Guangdong achieved last year. We have been trying to put quality over quantity in economic development," Huang said in the government report.

According to Huang, Guangdong generated 2.6 trillion yuan ($332.8 billion) in GDP last year, an increase of 14.1 percent over 2005.

Energy consumption in the province also went down by 2.7 percent in the first half of last year and continued to go down in the second half, according to Huang.

With the steady economic growth, Guangdong took up one-eighth of the nation's total GDP last year, Huang said.

In terms of economic development in rural areas, Guangdong invested 14.6 billion yuan ($1.87 billion)for improvement of farming and education sectors last year, up 20.6 percent year-on-year.

In another area, the province realized a hi-tech industry production value of more than 1,500 billion yuan ($192 billion) last year, up 30 percent year-on-year.

"Hi-tech industry contributed most to the GDP growth. And we will continue to focus on innovation promotion in the years to come, to further develop the hi-tech industry," Huang said.

He also said a total of 111 billion yuan ($14 billion) were invested in 162 key projects last year, of which 38 have already been put into production and construction had begun on 32 projects.

"This year, we will spare no efforts to optimize investment structure, as well as accelerate construction of key projects and infrastructure," Huang pledged in the report.

Huang also said that the provincial government would continue to focus on solving major problems that have been plaguing local residents.

Deputies to the annual session of the People's Congress, as well as the local resident are deeply concerned with food safety, traffic jams and rising house price.

Editor: Yan