During the first half of 2017, Dongguan’s economic performance showed signs of “accelerating growth, higher ranking and optimizing structure”. According to the Dongguan Bureau of Statistics, Dongguan’s GDP for the first half of this year was about 352.54 billion RMB, increasing by 8.1%. The growth rate in the second quarter was 0.6% higher than the first quarter, and respectively 6.9% and 7.8% higher than the average provincial and national levels. This ranks Dongguan 6th among the 21 cities above prefecture level in Guangdong province.
Dongguan’s resident population is about 8.26 million, so the per capital deposit balance of Dongguan people was 62,125 RMB, basically at the same level as the end of last year.
In the first half of this year, Dongguan’s industrial added value above city scale was about 153.87 billion RMB, increasing by 12.3%during the period. The annual growth rate reached 2.3%, which was 5.1% above the provincial average (7.2%), ranking Dongguan 2nd. Among them, added value in advanced industrial manufacturing reached 78.42 billion RMB, increasing by 17.8%during the year, giving an annual growth rate 5.5% higher than the provincial average. Added value in industrial high-tech manufacturing reached 60.459 billion RMB, increasing by 21.4% for the period, giving an annual growth 9.1% higher than the provincial average. The proportion of advanced manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing reached 51% and 39.3% respectively, with 2.5% and 2.4% in the same period last year.
Driven by rapid production growth of mobile phone enterprises, electronic information manufacturing has at its’ maximum achieved 53.56 billion RMB in added value, increasing by 22.7% and stimulating 7.3% of industrial growth above city scale levels.
Statistics also show that for the first half of this year in Dongguan, real estate investments peaked to 32.72 billion RMB, increasing by 10.4% in the period, with market growth rates increased by 4.6% in the first quarter. 2.54 million square metres of housing was completed during the period, an increase of 98.6%. By the end of June, the commercial housing construction area was about 41.83 million square metres, increasing by 6%.
Dongguan’s area of newly built commercial housing in online sales for the first half of this year was 3.44 million square metres, down by 41.9%. The decreasing rate was 11.1% during the first quarter. At 52.16 billion RMB, it is down 30.1%. By the end of June, the city’s commercial housing area for sale was 3.4436 million square metres, of which the residential area for sale was about 1.88 million square metres.
(By Stefanie Tan, Sammi Li and Sev Pischl)