IN BRIEF (Page 10)

Dazhou sulfur plant

Dazhou, a city in the eastern part of Sichuan province, will build Asia's largest sulfur producing facility by 2010. The area's annual sulfur output is expected to surpass 4 million tons when the plant is operational, mayor Luo Qiang says.

Located at the juncture of Sichuan, Hubei, Shaanxi provinces and Chongqing municipality, Dazhou, which has convenient transport facilities, boasts natural gas reserves of 3.8 trillion cu m, of which 660 billion cu m have been found.

Its natural gas has a high sulfur content. In some of its natural gas wells the percentage of sulfur-bearing hydrogen from which sulfur is produced is graded at more than 17 percent.

Home rebuilding on track

The rebuilding of homes in 10 provinces hit by heavy snow earlier this year is going smoothly, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) says.

The MCA and the Ministry of Finance have allocated 1.15 billion yuan for house reconstruction.

Severe winter weather hit central and southern China during the first six weeks of 2008 and destroyed about 485,000 houses. The worst damage was in the provinces of Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

In Yunnan, which recorded snowfalls later than other areas, reconstruction work has started on about 18 percent of the houses, the ministry says. The figure was much higher in other nine province level regions: more than 60 percent of the homes were being rebuilt as of April 15, according to the ministry.

Shanghai targets accidents

The Shanghai municipal government has vowed to eliminate all potential problems that could lead to engineering accidents this year as the city enters its peak year for infrastructure projects, Zhang Yunjie, deputy director of the Shanghai engineering administrative bureau, says.

He says all the Shanghai Expo-related infrastructure projects - particularly the new Metro lines and at least three tunnels - will have to be completed by the end of 2009.

The government will send extra watchdogs to monitor "key engineering processes" - such as when river tunnels have to run closely beneath operational Metro lines.

The government has also asked all construction companies to improve their safety supervision at all levels, Zhang says.

Yunnan added value up

The added value of Yunnan's light industrial enterprises, with annual main business earnings exceeding 5 million yuan, reached 22.41 billion yuan in the first quarter, a year-on-year growth of 14.7 percent, says the provincial statistics bureau.

The growth is mainly attributed to the tobacco and sugar industries.

The added value of the province's tobacco industry totaled 17.26 billion yuan in the first three months, up 14.3 percent from a year earlier.

The sugar-making industry's added value was 2.03 billion yuan in the period, an increase of 21.9 percent.

Beijing per capita income up

The per capita disposable income of urban residents in Beijing stood at 6,490 yuan in the first quarter, 10 percent up over a year earlier. But the growth rate is 3.6 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.

The lower growth rate is mainly due to the small growth for salaries of government staffs and for residents' property incomes.

The per capita cash income for rural residents in the capital was 3,717 yuan in the first quarter, up 12.8 percent from a year earlier.

Hunan retail sales grow

The retail sales of Hunan province grew by 21.6 percent in March, the highest monthly growth in recent years, figures from the provincial statistics bureau show.

The province's retail sales in the first quarter totaled 95.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.4 percent.

The retail sales in urban areas were 56.57 billion yuan in the period, 22.2 percent up from a year earlier.

The figure for rural areas was 39.15 billion yuan, up 14.3 percent year-on-year.

Exports rise for Hong Kong

Hong Kong's volume of total goods exports grew 5.5 percent while the volume of imports rose 9.8 percent in February compared with the same month of last year, the census and statistics department of Hong Kong says.

Hong Kong's re-exports of goods also grew 5.9 percent in the same month of last year, while domestic exports shrank 4.5 percent. The price of total goods exports rose 2.8 percent and the price of goods imports grew 3.5 percent. The price of re-exports rose 2.8 percent while that of domestic exports grew 3.4 percent.

In February, the total export volume to the mainland and Germany rose 12.2 percent and 7.4 percent respectively, while that to Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom fell 0.7 percent, 16.4 percent and 20.3 percent.

Macao gambling revenue

Macao's gambling regulation authority says recently the special administrative region logged over 30.085 billion patacas ($3.761 billion) in gaming revenues for the first quarter of this year.

The gambling revenue for the period almost reached the total of 2003, which was 30.315 billion patacas, according to the statistics released by the gaming inspection and coordination bureau (DICJ) of the SAR government.

The island city's 29 casinos housed a total of 13,552 slot machines and 4,311 gambling tables, which saw a decrease of 64 tables compared with 2007.

It is estimated gambling revenue for the whole year could grow by 30 to 40 percent compared with 2007.

(China Daily 04/28/2008 page10)