What's news

Volkswagen arm buys Shanghai leasing firm

The German automaker Volkswagen's service arm Volkswagen New Mobility Services Investment Co Ltd said on Monday that it had acquired Shanghai Zhenlang Transportation Equipment Leasing Co and will officially establish car rental operations across China. According to the company's General Manager, Peter Tempich, after the first step of the acquisition, the company plans to gradually set up car rental stations in all major cities of the country, providing long-term rental and leasing services for corporate clients.

Bureau revises nation's GDP figure for 2011

China's statistics authority on Monday revised its gross domestic product for 2011 slightly up based on its final verification. The revised GDP was 47.31 trillion yuan ($7.52 trillion), up 22.2 billion yuan from the preliminary verification figure, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. Year-on-year growth remained unchanged at 9.3 percent, calculating in constant prices, the statement said. According to international practices, the GDP figure is usually adjusted several times as more statistics become available, the bureau said.

Rare earth production quotas set for 2013

China, the world's biggest supplier of rare earths, set the first of two production quotas for 2013 at 46,900 metric tons of the ore, which is refined for use in mobile phones, hybrid cars and missile systems. The figure is about half the total quota set last year, according to a Ministry of Land and Resources statement posted on its website on Saturday. The ministry did not make the production quotas public last year, while the figure for 2011 was 93,800 tons. Output quotas for the rest of the year will be announced in the second quarter, according to the statement.

Beijing airport passenger throughput rises 4.2%

Beijing Capital International Airport remained the world's second-busiest in 2012 in terms of passenger throughput, according to figures from the airport. Passenger throughput grew 4.2 percent year-on-year to reach 81.8 million people last year, while the number of daily passengers exceeded 278,000 during peak travel periods, officials said in a statement. Ninety-four airlines were using it as a flight hub by the end of last year, operating flights to 236 destinations.

Coldest winter in 28 years hurts wheat crop

The coldest winter in 28 years in China, the world's largest wheat producer, may hamper the developing winter crop, according to the official China National Grain and Oils Information Center. Southern China will be hit by a new cold front this week, and temperatures will drop to as low as minus 5 C on Friday and Saturday, the China Meteorological Administration said in a statement on Monday. Guizhou and Hunan provinces may experience snowstorms, it said.

Toyota pushes back plan on million-unit market

Toyota Motor Corp pushed back plans to make China its next million-unit market until after this year as Asia's biggest carmaker waits for anti-Japan sentiment to subside and demand to return to normal. The maker of the Camry sedan, which until early September had forecast China sales would reach 1 million in 2012, said on Monday it expects deliveries in the country to rise about 7 percent to 900,000 units in 2013 after they fell 4.9 percent last year. In December, sales fell 16 percent to 90,800, the sixth straight monthly drop, it said.

Galaxy Securities to double IPO size as stocks gain

China Galaxy Securities Co may seek as much as $1.9 billion in an initial public offering in Hong Kong and Shanghai, almost doubling an earlier target, after Chinese stocks rallied from a four-year low, two insiders have said. The Beijing-based brokerage has submitted applications to regulators in Hong Kong and China and may start the IPO in the second quarter, said the two sources, who asked not to be identified because the plan is private.

Lenovo about to turn profit from smartphone business

Lenovo Group Ltd's smartphone business in China is about to turn its first profit, enabling the company to expand margins while funding a handset push into emerging markets, Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing said. "Very soon you will see we'll start to make money in the China smartphone area," Yang said in an interview in Beijing. Lenovo shares surged 36 percent in Hong Kong last year as it added market share to become the world's biggest vendor of personal computers and China's second-largest seller of smartphones.

Nation starts $481 million nuclear power project

China started the construction of a 3 billion yuan ($481 million) nuclear power reactor last month, Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday, citing the Chinese energy company in charge of the project. The reactor, which is being built at Shidao Bay in Shandong province, will start generating power by the end of 2017 and will have a capacity of 200 megawatts, Xinhua said, quoting the operator of the plant, Huaneng Shandong Shidao Bay Nuclear Power Co. The world's largest energy consumer is seeking to more than triple its nuclear power capacity to 40 million kilowatts in 2015 from 12.54 million kilowatts at the end of 2011.

Value of M&As surges 37% in 2012: Report

Mergers and acquisitions by Chinese enterprises surged 37 percent in 2012 in terms of disclosed transaction value, according to data released on Sunday by ChinaVenture, the research and consulting institute. The total value of disclosed M&A transactions involving Chinese firms amounted to $307.79 billion in 2012, the highest recorded since 2007, with the total transaction value nearly tripling since then, the report said. However, the total number of M&As was down, with a total of 3,555 transactions announced, 23 percent less that in 2011.

CSI 300 index enters bull market after 20% rally

China's CSI 300 Index entered a bull market after rallying 20 percent from its 2012 low amid signs of an economic recovery in the world's second-largest economy. The gauge tracking 300 yuan-denominated A shares traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen gained 0.5 percent to 2,535.99 at the close on Monday, led by healthcare and financial companies. It has rebounded 20 percent since Dec 3. Beijing Tiantan Biological Products jumped 10 percent on Monday on speculation medicine demand will increase after two women died from the H1N1 flu strain in Beijing and the government set targets for expansion in the biomedical industry.

Top gold producer's sales rise, but profits fall in 2012

China National Gold Group Corp, the country's largest gold producer, said in its annual report on Monday that its sales reached 100.6 billion yuan ($16 billion) in 2012, up 27.1 percent from 2011. Yet it had profits of 4.45 billion yuan, down 55 million yuan year on year. Total assets had hit a record-high 65 billion yuan by the end of the year, up 11.5 billion yuan from a year earlier, it said. The company's gold reserves reached 1,758 tons, up 374 tons from the previous year.

Asset value of public funds hits five-year high

The net asset value of Chinese public funds increased 30.8 percent year-on-year to 2.87 trillion yuan ($454.97 billion) by the end of 2012, a five-year high, the Shanghai Securities News reported on Monday. Over the past year, 255 new funds with 650 billion yuan in assets were launched, an all-time high, according to data from China Galaxy Securities Co Ltd. About 80 percent of the new funds were fixed-income products with lower investment risk, valued at 506.4 billion yuan.

Property developers enjoy solid growth in 2012

Despite purchasing limit policies remaining firmly in place, sales by China's largest property developers still showed a strong increase in 2012, according to a report by the China Index Academy, a Beijing-based industry research institute. It showed sales by 53 Chinese property companies surpassed 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion). Three developers had sales of over 100 billion yuan: China Vanke Co Ltd, Poly Real Estate Group Co Ltd, and Shanghai Greenland Group.

China Daily -Agencies

(China Daily 01/08/2013 page14)