investment briefs

Some 6.8m new urban jobs have been created so far this year out of a year-end target of
8m, reported AFX Asia. Official figures put China’s urban jobless rate at 4.2 per cent at the
end of September, with a year-end target of 4.5 per cent.
Migrant and laid-off workers are being recruited into community-based trade unions,
reported Xinhua. Some 92m farmers have left their home village and now work in cities as
industrial labourers. Many work in small groups or in non-state enterprises and have often
been out of the reach of old-style urban trade unions.
Value-added tax in China is to be changed from a production-oriented system to one
based on consumption. The Communist Party’s Central Committee also said the general tax
code would be simplified and rural and income taxes harmonised.
Car output surged 70 per cent in September from a year earlier to 191,300 vehicles,
while production of all vehicles rose 37 per cent in the same period, reported China Daily.
Foreign direct investment increased 12 per cent year-on-year to US$40.2bn in the first
nine months of 2003. Contracted FDI rose 36 per cent to US$79bn in the same period.
China’s foreign exchange reserves reached US$383.9bn by the end of September, up 48
per cent over the same period last year, reported Xinhua.
The Beijing mayor sacked for mismanaging the Sars outbreak this spring has made
a rapid political comeback. Meng Xuenong has been appointed as the top official overseeing
the US$50bn south-north water transfer project. He was originally dismissed along with
health minister Zhang Wenkang.
A report by the State Forestry Administration estimated that 15-20 per cent of plants
and animals across the country are endangered because of poaching and habitat destruction.
The report went on to claim that the threat to Chinese species was considerably higher than
in most other nations and that by 2010 up to 4,000 plant species would be endangered.
Kerry Properties of Hong Kong is to make another major investment in Beijing’s real
estate market, with a US$347m luxury residential development containing 5,000 units.