FOREIGN investment in the first three months of this year were about US$3.005 billion, increasing by 56 percent on the same period of last year, which was the highest in the past 30 years.

During the first three quarters, the city had approved 490 foreign-funded projects with total investment of US$3. 78 billion yuan, increasing by 17.9 percent over last year.

Among these, 54 projects with total contracted investment of US$ 660 million were related to the blue economy, accounting for 17.4 percent among all, while 45 projects were new industry projects with total investment of US$430 million were. These projects were in areas such as new energy, biological industry, e-business, logistics and finance. 37 of the projects with investment of US$330 million were merging projects, accounting for 8.6 percent.

The number of foreign projects with total investment of more than US$10 million reached 131 and their total investment was US$2.34 billion, increasing by 11.9 percent over the first three quarters of last year. Among these, six projects had investments of more than US$100 million and 69 projects had already received a combined investment of US$1.85 billion.

252 projects with investment of US$1.94 billion were in the service industry. Among these, projects in financial industry had already paid US$32.2 million, increasing by 340 percent over the same period of last year. (Wang Yuanyuan, Shen Junlin)