Chinese non-financial companies made direct investments valued at US$8.5 billion in 974 overseas enterprises in 98 countries and regions around the world in the first quarter of 2011, Yao Jian, spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, announced on April 19.
With the cumulative outbound direct investments from non-financial companies reached US$ 267 billion at the end of March 2011. Several offshore centers were high on the list of investment destinations, with the largest recipients of outbound direct investment being Hong Kong, Australia, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Iran, the United States, Singapore, Burma, Brazil, Cambodia and Laos. Direct investments in Australia and the European Union were up by about 150%.
In the first quarter, US$1.2 billion U.S. dollars of outbound direct investment came from mergers and acquisitions, accounting for 14% of the total. The merger and acquisition deals were primarily in the manufacturing sector.
China posted US$17 billion in turnover of international engineering contracting projects for the first quarter, up 3% compared with the same period last year. The value of newly-signed contracts stood at 31 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 17 percent from a year earlier. The turnover of engineering contracting projects in Africa dropped drastically because of the political unrest in some North African and Middle East countries.
