OREANDA-NEWS. July 20, 2012.   The economy of Anhui has expanded at a moderately fast pace amid national and global slump since January.

The province's gross domestic product (GDP) rose 12 percent year-on-year to 778.2 billion yuan (USD 123.5 billion) during the first half of 2012. Such a growth rate was 4.2 percentage points higher than the national average and the highest among those achieved by the central China's six provinces, the Anhui Provincial Bureau of Statistics announced on Thursday.

"Economic indicators for the Jan-Jun period shows the province continues to maintain stable and fairly fast economic growth," Zhao Jinbao, a spokesman with the bureau said.

More and more factors favorable to economic growth have emerged since April, especially the provincial government's stimulus policies and measures, said Zhao.

The first half of this year saw a rise in both the primary and secondary sectors, the provincial statistics bureau said.

The summer grain yield increased by 6.6 percent from a year earlier to 13 billion kilograms, marking a nine-consecutive-year rise, while the province's industrial value-added output reached 348 billion yuan, up 16.5 percent year-on-year.

Meanwhile, Anhui's fixed asset investment jumped by 22.8 percent year-on-year to 677.5 billion yuan. The growth rate was 2.4 percentage points higher than the country's average.

The province's retail sales of consumer goods totaled 267.6 billion yuan from January to June, representing an increase of 16 percent from the same period last year. The figure enabled Anhui to rank NO 1 among 28 mainland Chinese provincial divisions, together with Tianjin and Guizhou.

During the same period, exports, at USD 15.9 billion, grew 10.9 percent year-on-year, compared to the 8 percent national average growth.

Local residents' income hiked, as the economy boomed. Over the past six months, urban residents' disposable income per capita rose 14.3 percent year-on-year to 10,691 yuan while per capita income for rural residents amounted to 4,259.9 yuan, up 18.9 percent from a year ago. Those figures were 1 and 2.8 percentage points higher than respective national levels.