The industry will grow by 10 percent annually in next Five-Year Plan period (2001-05), said Zhou Jianping, deputy director of the Technology and Equipment Department under the State Economic and Trade Commission.

Zhou said the country's construction machinery industry was still quiet at the moment but had been boosted by booming building projects and the western development programme.

Project -- which links oilfields in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with Shanghai -- a power transmission project from the country's west to east, and a national urbanization programme that will dramatically increase the number of cities and townships in China.

Western development, which has entailed the building of railways, highways, airports and other infrastructure facilities, will also bring abundant business opportunities to the construction machinery sector.

"Building equipment will be needed for all these projects and tens of billions of yuan will have to be poured into the industry," said Zhou.

"Each year, 5 to 8 percent of building funds will go towards buying equipment."

China currently has a total of 1,008 manufacturers in the construction machinery sector which supply 60 percent of the domestic market demand, the remainder being met by foreign machinery manufacturers.

China has imported machinery products worth more than US$1 billion each year for the past five years," said Qi Jun, president of the China National Construction Machinery Corp.

"New projects will be worth several billion US dollars."

He said foreign companies are welcome to compete and bid for business opportunities.

"The government is to work out policies that will provide a much more market-oriented and transparent environment for fairer competition between domestic and foreign manufacturers,"said Zhou.

Zhou said the injection of foreign investment in China's construction machinery sector would be much easier after China's accession to the World Trade Organization, expected early next year.

(China Daily 12/11/2000)