China's outbound investment is expected to continue to increase and could soon exceed foreign direct investment (FDI), an official said Tuesday.

The statement was made by Ministry of Commerce (MOC) spokesman Shen Danyang after the MOC released the investment figures for the first eight months this year.

From January to August, FDI, which excludes investment in the financial sector, stood at 78.34 billion U.S. dollars, down 1.8 percent from the same period last year, the ministry said.

In contrast, China's outbound direct investment by non-financial firms surged 15.3 percent to 65.17 billion U.S. dollars in the same period.

Shen said China's outbound investment would continue growing rapidly, and the long-term growth trend would not change.

He attributed the prospects mainly to a more favorable policy environment for companies to "go out," better financial conditions, and Chinese firms' increasing competitiveness in the sectors of light industry, machinery equipment, ship-building, chemical engineering and electronic information.

The outbound investment in the first eight months last year was greatly boosted by CNOOC's 15.1-billion-USD acquisition of Canada's oil and gas company Nexen, said Shen.

When excluding the effect of this big deal, outbound investment for the first eight months this year could be more than 40 percent higher than the same period last year, he added. Endi

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