Baotou witnesses economic recovery in first quarter

Baotou city in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region is seeing steady economic growth, with its regional domestic product reaching 94.03 billion yuan ($13.6 billion), up 7.9 percent year-on-year, local media reported.

The added value of agriculture was 870 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.4 percent; the added value of industry was 46.47 billion yuan, an increase of 13 percent over the same period last year; and the added value of the tertiary industry was 46.69 billion yuan, an increase of 4.2 percent year-on-year, according to statistics.

The added value of key industries, including steel, aluminum, equipment manufacturing, rare earth, power and photovoltaic manufacturing, increased by 16.5 percent year-on-year. The added value of the photovoltaic manufacturing industry alone increased by 93.7 percent year-on-year, while the rare earth industry grew by 6.3 percent.

In the first quarter, the city's fixed-asset investment increased by 39.2 percent year on year, 6.2 percentage points higher than in January and February and 34.1 percentage points higher than the national average of 5.1 percent.

The consumer market also witnessed growth. In the first quarter, the total retail sales of consumer goods in the city reached 25.09 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.8 percent, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from January to February and 1 percentage point higher than the national average of 5.8 percent.

Residents' incomes rose steadily as well. In the first quarter, the per-capita disposable income of urban permanent residents in the city was 15,320 yuan, an increase of 3.3 percent, while the per-capita disposable income of permanent residents in rural areas was 8,312 yuan, an increase of 5.1 percent.