Chinese companies continued to boost their overseas investment in the first half of the year, official data showed yesterday.

China’s non-financial outbound direct investment rose 58.7 percent from a year earlier to 580.28 billion yuan (US$86.7 billion) in the January-June period, Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said during a press conference.

In June, ODI boomed 44.9 percent year on year to 100.17 billion yuan, data showed.

“The investment structure is improving,” Shen said, citing surging capital flow into the manufacturing sector.

Around US$17.59 billion went to manufacturing in the first half, up substantially by 245.6 percent from a year ago. Equipment manufacturing accounted for 68.4 percent of the total.

Chinese companies secured around US$51.45 billion worth of projects in 61 countries involved in the Belt and Road initiative in the first six months, up 37 percent from a year ago.

The ministry also released China’s service trade data at the conference. China’s service imports and exports totaled 2.08 trillion yuan during the first five months of the year, up 22.7 percent year on year. Exports in computing, technology, financial, advertising and information service industries grew rapidly.

Service trade accounted for 18.5 percent of the country’s total imports and exports during the January-May period. The proportion was 3.2 percentage points higher than the same period in 2015, data showed.

Shen predicted the service trade will reach 2.5 trillion yuan in the first half of the year.

(Source: Xinhua)