Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences and the Social Sciences Academic Press (China) jointly released the Guangzhou Blue Paper: Guangzhou Economic Development Report (2016) (the Report for short) on July 12. The Report analyzes the economic performance of Guangzhou in 2015, predicts the economic trends in 2016, and offers suggestions.

 

The Report points out that in 2015, Guangzhou’s gross domestic product (GDP) reached RMB1.810041 trillion, up 8.4%. Looking into 2016, the Report predicts that Guangzhou’s GDP will grow at about 8.1% with consideration of all elements. The financial industry in 2015 grew by 14.2% year-on-year, accounting for 9% of GDP.

 

With regard to the industry, the Report points out that the total industrial output above statistics threshold reached RMB1.871236 trillion in 2015, up 6.4%, down 1.5 percentage points against the previous year.

 

The prosperity of the three pillar industries varied. In 2015, the three pillar industries achieved the industrial output of RMB911.925 billion, up 8.7％, 0.1 percentage point lower than that in the previous year, 2.3 percentage points higher than the average growth rate of the industries above statistics threshold of Guangzhou.

 

The automobile manufacturing industry achieved the output value of RMB377.679 billion, up 6.0%, 4.3 percentage points lower than the growth rate of the previous year; the petrochemical manufacturing industry achieved the output value of RMB255.316 billion, up 2.2%, 5.8 percentage points lower than that in the previous year; driven by the production capacity expansion of LG Display Project, the hot market of Internet and intelligent technology related electronic products, the electronic product manufacturing industry realized the output value of RMB278.93 billion, up 20.6%, 13.2 percentage points higher than that in the previous year.

 

With regard to the service industry, the financial industry accelerated development in 2015, and realized the added value of RMB162.943 billion, up 14.2% year-on-year, becoming the second largest sector of the service industry, following the wholesale and retailing sector.

 

Meanwhile, the real estate industry developed rapidly too. This sector realized the added value of RMB148.730 billion, up 14.2% year-on-year. The online registered area of commercial housing reached 10.7943 million square meters, up 29.1% against the previous year.

 

Another highlight of the service industry of Guangzhou in 2015 was that it maintained the good momentum of the emerging economy and the traditional commerce and trade industry remained the low-rate development. The online shopping and information consumption related product retailing grew rapidly, and the retailing of online shops above the quota grew by 62.1%, driving the total retail sales of consumer goods to grow by about 2.8 percentage points. The cross-border e-commerce import and export in 2015 amounted to RMB6.75 billion, an increase of 3.7 times, ranking the first place among the pilot cities of China.

 

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, July 13, 2016