A senior official of China Automobile Industry Association said China has become attractive to foreign auto parts buyers due to its low production cost.

China Securities Journal Thursday quoted the Association's Vice President Jiang Lei as saying that before the end of 2007, multinational firms are likely to purchase 50 billion U.S. dollars worth of auto parts in these countries, where the production cost is low, with 70 percent of them eyeing the Chinese market.

The Association's data showed that in 2005 alone, the number of foreign auto parts enterprises which came to China to either invest or seek cooperation totaled more than 90, with the contractual value reaching 4 billion U.S. dollars, or 3.2 times of the 2004 figure.

In 2005, China's export of auto parts stood at 8.53 billion dollars, Jiang said. The country's auto parts export grew 7.6 fold over the past five years.

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