Feb 10, 2023
On February 1, China's Dalian Municipal Bureau of Statistics released the city's economic indicators for 2022. The city's gross regional product (GRP) in 2022 was 843.09 billion yuan (about 16,861.8 billion yen; 1 yuan = about 20 yen), a growth rate of 4%, 1 percentage point higher than the national average (3%) (see attachment Table 1). The main economic indicators, excluding total retail sales of social consumer goods and real estate development investment, showed positive year-on-year growth.
Industrial production growth (in value-added terms) by enterprises above a certain size (see note) was 5.1% y/y, 1.5 percentage points above the national average (+3.6%). Looking at key industries, the high-tech manufacturing (+15.4%), petrochemical (+13.3%), and pharmaceutical (+7%) industries were the driving forces, while the agricultural processing industry (-0.1%) saw a slight decline.
Looking at fixed asset investment (+6.5% YoY) by sector, real estate development investment (-16.5%) declined, while infrastructure investment (+28.4%) and manufacturing (+43.2%) increased substantially. Total retail sales of social consumer goods declined 3.3%, but of these, new energy vehicles performed well, up 2.6x.
According to the 2023 Dalian Municipal Government Activity Report, the GRP growth rate target for that year was set at 6% or higher, and 10 major missions were formulated. 10 of these missions include: in attracting foreign investment, the construction of the China-Japan (Dalian) Local City Development Cooperation Model Zone will be accelerated to become the best candidate location for Japanese companies to establish operations. In international trade, the functions of the RCEP International Business Zone (see June 7, 2022 article) will be promoted to provide "one-stop" services such as customs clearance, logistics and finance. In the area of international transportation, the region will improve the functions of the Northeast Asia International Shipping Center and open two new container routes to achieve a container handling volume of 5 million TEUs (equivalent to 20-foot containers). In addition, both inward direct investment (up 15%) and total trade (up 12.8%) in 2022 showed double-digit growth.
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