SHANGHAI'S gross domestic product expanded 7.7 percent from a year earlier to 1.02 trillion yuan (US$164.5 billion) in the first half of this year, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau said today.
The rate slowed a bit from the increase of 7.8 percent in the first three months but was higher than the national average of 7.6 percent between January and June.
The bureau did not provide the breakdowns of the second-quarter growth figure.
The overall economy remained stable with the service industry leading the growth, the bureau said.
Production of the service industry gained 9.6 percent to 627.6 billion yuan, with the rate outpacing the manufacturing sector by 4.7 percentage points, the bureau said. The output of services accounted for 61.7 percent of the total production, up 1.3 percentage points from a year before.
In the first half, Shanghai's industrial production rose 4.8 percent to 329.4 billion yuan, with automobile and bio-medicine reporting double-digit production growth rates.
Retail sales jumped 9.1 percent to 388.7 billion yuan in the January-June period, while fixed-asset investment added 12.1 percent to 231.5 billion yuan.
The city's trade weakened with exports decreasing 4.3 percent and imports losing 3.2 percent during the period, but inflation was still under control, as the Consumer Price Index landed at 2.3 percent in the first half, down 1.3 percentage points from a year earlier.
With only 0.06 percent of China's land, 1.8 percent of its population and 1.7 percent of its investment, Shanghai produced more than 4 percent of the nation's overall economic output.
Shanghai targets at an economic growth rate of 7.5 percent this year, hoping to accelerate industrial restructuring, further raise people's income and enhance efforts on combating pollution, Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong said earlier, stressing a further shift to "growth quality."
Shanghai will put the construction of China's first free trade zone in the city's Pudong New Area on the top of the government work agenda in the rest of this year, said Shanghai Party Secretary Han Zheng earlier this month, expecting the program to create brand new growth opportunities for the city.