Turnover of China Everbright International grew by 105 percent to 133.82 million HK dollars (17. 27 million U.S. dollars) in 2005 due to the group's hefty investment in environmental protection projects.

The strong performance also resulted in an increase of 21 percent in profit attributable to shareholders to 105.33 million HK dollars (13.59 million U.S. dollars), the conglomerate's Chief Executive Officer Chen Xiaoping told a press conference here on Tuesday.

The board proposed the payment of 0.6 HK cent per share as the final dividend for the year and 0.6 HK cent as the interim dividend.

The encouraging growth in turnover was mainly attributed to the significant profit brought forth by infrastructure and property investment businesses, couple with the commencement of profit contribution of the group's environmental protection business, said Chen.

Starting with infrastructure and property investment, Everbright reaped all of its profits from the two sectors in 2004.

In the last year, however, Everbright's investment in the environmental protection sector started to operate and contributed 13 percent of its total turnover and four percent of its profits.

Noting the business potential brought by growing awareness of an ecological environment, Chen said his company has increased and will further investment in the sector of environmental protection.

"The group's environmental protection projects under operation commenced profit contribution and become new sources of profit growth of the group," said Chen.

Compared to last year's capital expenditure of 200 million HK dollars (25.81 million U.S. dollars), Everbright planned one billion HK dollars (129 million U.S. dollars) for capital expenditure in 2006, most of which will be invested into environmental protection projects.

The group currently is holding contracts of environmental protection projects of 600 million HK dollars (77.42 million U.S. dollars), said Chen.

Since 2003, the conglomerate has invested in six environmental protection projects with a total of more than 1.2 billion HK dollars (154.84 million U.S. dollars). Most of the projects are plants generating electricity through burning rubbish or management of waste water.

Source: Xinhua