The fact that the Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBH) has been included in China's national developmental strategy and listed as an experimental zone of China's comprehensive reform aroused widespread investor attention, both at home and abroad. Quite a few business people visited Tianjin for surveys and negotiations of investment projects, and the city is catching a new round of foreign investor fever.

Statistics show that from January to May this year, newly approved foreign-invested enterprises reached 421 in Tianjin, with contracted and actually utilized foreign capital at 3.183 and 1.56 billion US dollars, respectively, 14.72% higher over 2005's comparable period. The good developmental trends are reflected in the expanding investment scale of these projects, the strong tendency of invested amount to increase, the apparent growth of the tertiary industries and the in-phase rise in economic benefit.

Tianjin has recently hosted promotion events of domestic and foreign investments highlighting the development and opening of the TBH area, which greatly elevates investor enthusiasm. Investment made by businessmen from Hong Kong, the US, Singapore, the UK, France and Italy has seen remarkable growth, and the actual utilization of foreign capital of the above regions jumped 33.92%,14.78%,134.94%,85.74%,218.66% and 788.2%, respectively. A number of foreign investors added to their existing investments and expanded the production scales as a result. In the first five months of 2006, a total of 281 enterprises added investments of 912 million US dollars, taking up 28.66% of total direct utilized foreign capital in that period, of which 16 projects had foreign investment value rise of more than 10 million US dollars.

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