Kunming industrial investment up 41%, highest since 2006

Last year, Kunming, capital city of Southwest China's Yunnan province, scored sound performance in investment promotion, project building, and economic and social development.

Data shows that its investment in industrial sector grew by 41.4 percent on a yearly basis to reach 57.84 billion yuan($8.38 billion) in 2022, the highest rate since 2006. Kunming also received over 218 million visitors in 2022, who brought revenue of 27.45 million yuan.

The city has built four industrial parks for traditional industries and another four zones for newly emergent sectors. It has also nurtured such specialty industries as petrochemicals, mineral exploration, equipment manufacturing, new materials, bio-medicine, digital economy and food processing.

As of the end of 2022, the annual main business revenue of local industrial areas registered a year-on-year growth of 14.9 percent to 1.2 trillion yuan and their total industrial output increased by 8.8 percent on a yearly basis to 459.52 billion yuan.

Meanwhile, Kunming had 361 new high-tech enterprises in 2022, up by 25.29 percent from a year earlier.

This year, Kunming will intensify its efforts to promote industrial revitalization, carry out an industry-driven development strategy, optimize industrial layout, administrative mechanisms and operating models of local industrial zones, and shore up weak links in the construction of infrastructure facilities.

For instance, the city will step up the construction of 30 major projects like the relocation of Southwestern Copper Co., Ltd and Yunnan Gold Industrial Park. It will put into operation 20 projects such as Kunming TEH-HO Food Group's smart manufacturing base and an international packaging industrial park for new materials. It will support key enterprises to further optimize their product structure, consolidate and expand their traditional strength as well as market share, and push for the building of manufacturing bases for Beijing Health Guard Biotechnology Inc's recombinant protein vaccines and Tian'an Chemical Group's new battery materials.

The city is set to raise the percentage of its newly emergent sector to over 20 percent of its overall industrial output. The scale of its digital economy is expected to exceed 500 billion yuan and account for over 10 percent of GDP by 2024, with an annual growth of over 25 percent.

Meanwhile, Kunming will deepen its involvement in the following areas: industrial digitization, the building of a smart city, the application of internet-connected vehicles, the innovation of artificial intelligence and the integration between the digital technology and traditional industries. It will bolster the scale of core industry in the digital economy, create industrial clusters of the digital economy, and strive to be an international digital hub facing South Asia and Southeast Asia.