Siemens' China sales rose 19 percent in fiscal 2008, or two times China's economic growth rate, and expects that pace to continue, an executive said yesterday.

The German engineering conglomerate's sales in China totaled 57 billion yuan (US$8.2 billion) in the year to the end of September, Richard Hausmann, chief executive officer for Northeast Asia, said. New orders in China also jumped 19 percent to 65.5 billion yuan during the same period, or 6 percent of its global total.

"We outgrow the market. We outgrow many of our competitors," Hausmann, also head of Siemens China, told a media briefing in Beijing, adding that the company's 2009 growth rate in China could still be double that of China's gross domestic product growth. He forecast China's GDP to grow at around 8 percent next year.

China is the second-largest foreign market after the United States for Siemens, whose products range from light bulbs and wind turbines to power transmission and healthcare equipment.

Hausmann said that despite the global economic slowdown and credit crunch, Siemens was in a solid financial condition globally, and this gave it the flexibility to acquire assets now with lower value in the sectors, such as industrial, energy and healthcare, that it participates in.

The Chinese government's recently announced 4-trillion-yuan economic stimulus package also provided more opportunities in areas such as rural development, environmental protection and energy, he said.

Siemens added 3,000 employees in China in the past year, bringing the total to 43,000. Hausmann said the company wouldn't stop hiring new staff in the coming year.

(Shanghai Daily December 5, 2008)