Last year, the province put quality over quantity in development strategy. The province's GDP increased by 14 percent to hit 2.60 trillion RMB as energy consumption index fell by 2.7 percent in the first half of last year. Land use per unit of industrial output increase dropped 18.8 percent last year. Its industrial output per capita climbed to 3,509 USD. Each urban resident had a disposable income of 16,016 RMB, up 8.4 percent while each rural resident earned 5,080 RMB, up 8.3 percent. Local fiscal revenue went up 20.5 percent to 217.5 billion RMB.

TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION
The province saw new progress in innovation and R&D last year. The province finished 22 key technology R&D and innovation projects, including "core chip design and manufacturing".
The province received 90,886 patent applications, including 21,351 inventions. Its enterprises made up over one fifth of China's patent applications. Its five projects won the national Patent Golden Award, taking one third of the total placements. The province's multi-channel digital video codec technique standard became the national standard.

OPTIMIZED INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE
The hi-tech industry produced over 1.5 trillion RMB, up 30 percent year on year. The added value of nine pillar industries hit 772 billion RMB, and the heavy industry contributed 60 percent of the total industrial output, up 3.6 percent. Logistics, exhibition, telecommunication, finance and culture industries saw rapid growth and the service industry yielded over 1 trillion RMB. The tourism industry earned 200 billion RMB.

UNDERDEVELOPED REGIONS
The eastern wing of Guangdong launched a "Catch-up Campaign". (See P7, GDICC No.10) The western wing's coastal, heavy and chemical industries saw fast growth. Cities in mountainous area had their industrial output and fiscal revenue up by 17.6 and 27.8 percent, outpacing the province as a whole by 3.5 and 7.3 percent. Counties speeded up their development and now they had 550,000 private enterprises and 2.46 million self-employed businesses.

FOREIGN TRADE AND COOPERATION
The export and import value exceeded 500 billion USD. Actual used FDI hit 14.5 billion USD, up 17.4 percent. The province undertook more outsourcing ser-vice projects from foreign countries.
108 non-finance enterprises made their international investment debuts last year. The contracted overseas projects and labour export projects valued at 3.8 billion USD. Provincial government and business leaders held business events in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, Finland and France, fetching contracts valuing at 9.7 billion USD.

REGIONAL COOPERATION
Guangdong expanded its cooperation with Hong Kong and Macao in man-ufacturing, service industry and customs clearance. They jointed hands to pro-mote Greater Pearl River Delta and Pan Pearl River Delta to EU and ASEAN. Shenzhen-Hong Kong western corridor project continued and Zhuhai-Macao Cross-border Industrial Zone has commenced operations. (see P10)
PPRD drew cooperation plans on transportation, energy, technology and environmental protection. Construction of Hengqin Economic Zone was completed. Guangdong signed agreements with Guangxi, Sichuan and Hunan to offer "barrier-free tour experience" for visitors. Guangdong signed 458 con-tracts worth 78.85 billion RMB, in the third PPRD annual conference.

KEY PROJECTS
Guangdong invested 111 billion RMB in 162 key projects last year. 38 projects were put into production, including Guangzhou Honda vehicle assembly, Maoming ethylene plant expansion and LNG station. 32 projects began construction, including CNOOC (Huizhou) oil refining project and FedEx's Asian transfer hub.  21 projects, with an input of 88 billion RMB, won approval.
The heavy industry and chemical industry sectors produced eye-catching results last year. The province now has an annual production ability of 1.1 million auto engines, 760,000 sedans, 2 million tons of ethylene and 33.5 mil-lion tons of refined oil. Guangdong is preparing for an oil project with Kuwait.
Guangdong's expressways were ext-ended by 200 km. The province added power generators with an installed capacity of 5.34 million kilowatts. 755 km of banks and reservoirs were strengthened.

FINANCE
Last year, Citigroup-led consortium purchased 85.6 percent stake in Guangdong Development Bank. As a result, the province's insurance industry outperformed counterparts of other provinces in major indexes.
Fiscal management reforms continued including state-owned property managing units and enterprises and provincially-owned enterprises.

Editor: Wing