East China's Zhejiang Province approved the establishment of 3,369 foreign-invested enterprises in 2005, according to local statistics bureau.

The bureau said that the projects involved 16.1 billion U.S. dollars in contractual use of foreign capital, a year-on-year growth of 10.8 percent.

The province actually used 7.72 billion U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment, or the FDI, last year, up 15.6 percent over the previous year.

Of the 3,396 foreign-funded enterprises approved last year, 860 involved an investment of more than 10 million U.S. dollars each, 23 more than in the previous year.

According to the statistics bureau, these 860 projects involved a combined investment of 26.6 billion U.S. dollars and 12.38 billion U.S. dollars in contractual use of foreign capital, or 80.9 percent and 76.8 percent, respectively, of the total for the 3,396 projects.

The manufacturing sector continued to dominate the province's absorption of foreign capital, accounting for 73.6 percent of the total contractual use of FDI and 78.6 percent of the total FDI actually used, the bureau added.

Source: Xinhua