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Updated: 2007-06-28 11:20

The 18th China Harbin International Fair for Trade and Economic Cooperation (Harbin Fair) has been a great success, said a senior official of the Heilongjiang provincial government.

Statistics show that domestic contracts worth 91.13 billion yuan were signed during the five-day event that began June 15, while the value of foreign contracts stood at $10.23 billion, an increase of 15.9 percent compared with the previous session.

Host province Heilongjiang in Northeast China alone secured 83.87 billion yuan worth of domestic contracts and $9.35 billion in foreign contracts, a growth of 50.5 and 16.7 percent respectively compared with last year's fair.

"It is the most successful session ever in the history of the Harbin Fair in terms of the contracts' quality and quantity," asserted Huang Weimin, an official of the Heilongjiang provincial committee of the Communist Party of China.

The fair focused on Russia-oriented trade and investment, created a platform for regional cooperation in Northeast Asia and facilitated economic exchange around the world, Huang added.

International feature

Over 18 years of development, Harbin Fair has grown from a border trade fair into an international comprehensive expo, Huang said.

While continuing to expand its influence in the Russian business sector, the fair is attracting more attention from other economies as well, he noted.

As an international business event, the fair attracted overseas 11,473 businesspeople from 81 countries and regions this year. About 322 Fortune Global 500 companies, multinationals and renowned firms sent delegations to the fair.

Among them, US-based Home Depot, a leading player in the home improvement retail industry, dispatched a special purchase group to the fair.

The growing presence of delegations from developed economies such as the European Union, the United States and Japan at the event indicated that Harbin Fair has grown into a premium brand of its kind, said Huang.

During the event, trade contracts finalized with US companies stood at $200 million and six US-invested projects with a total value of $100 million were settled.

European countries, excluding Russia, contributed $310 million in trade transactions and six projects with a total investment value of $150 million were agreed upon.

Promotional activities

A string of business promotional activities was the highlight of Harbin Fair.

The activities included the Russia Business Day, the US Enterprises' Journey to Heilongjiang, the EU Partnership Day, the Sino-German Economic and Trade Cooperation Talks, the Sino-Russian-Finland Business Forestry Cooperation Talks, the Seminar on China-Russia Ports and Trade Facilitation, and the South Korea Business Day.

Huang said the promotional activities attracted a great number of participants from both home and abroad.

Chinese delegations from various regions placed a high value on the business activities, with many of them led by high-ranking local government officials who presented their investment projects and engaged in negotiations with prospective foreign investors.

The boom in business promotional activities prompted some of the visiting delegations to add to such activities or launch new ones.

The number of contracts signed in the promotional activities accounted for 56 percent of the total inked during the fair.

Biggest winner

The 2007 Harbin Fair attracted more than 110,000 domestic businesspeople and 41 economic and trade delegations from 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.

Heilongjiang Province topped the Chinese delegations in terms of trade volume and investment projects secured during the event.

Figures show that the province secured 45 foreign-invested projects, each with an investment value exceeding $10 million, with a total value of $1.94 billion. It also won 65 foreign trade contracts, each worth more than $10 million and with a total value of $3.84 billion. Further, 123 Chinese-invested projects with an investment value exceeding 100 million yuan each and a total value of 57.5 billion yuan were also secured .

The biggest foreign-invested project with an investment value of $330 million and an expected annual output of 1-million-ton of paper pulp, as well as the biggest foreign trade contract worth $360 million, were both secured by the province.