China's northern province of Hebei used US$400 million of foreign funds in the first quarter of this year, a drastic increase of 99.3 percent year on year, the latest statistics show.

The province, which surrounds the national capital Beijing, approved 106 foreign-financed enterprises, up 21.8 percent over the same quarter of last year. Involved contractual foreign investment reached US$410 million, a rise of 31.1 percent on a yearly basis.

Of the newly-approved enterprises, 13 each have a foreign investment of over US$10 million.

Smelting and rolling of ferrous metals, paper-making and paper products manufacturing, and non-metal mineral products processing became the new areas which saw fast increasing inflow of foreign funds.

The smelting and rolling of the ferrous metals sector absorbed US$96.66 million in the three-month period, accounting for 39.2 percent of the total foreign funds flowing into the province and 7.7 times the amount of foreign funds flowing into the sector in last year's same period.

Paper-making and paper products manufacturing attracted US$20.36 million and the non-metal mineral products processing absorbed US$15.43 million  in the first three months respectively. The two figures were 28.2 times and 9.6 times the respective figures for the corresponding period of last year.

The Republic of Korea, Singapore, the United States and the Virgin Island (UK) were the leading foreign investors of Hebei in the first quarter.

(Xinhua News Agency May 10, 2004)