Recently, series of news reports about a great number of foreign-funded enterprises moved out of Guangdong attracted large attention. "Those reports are groundless", said Liang Yaowen, Director-General of the Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Department of Guangdong Province.

He believes that the move-out of small and medium-sized overseas-funded enterprises in Pearl River Delta is not a common situation, after the department's research and investigation in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhongshan and Huizhou where foreign-funded enterprises are grouped in.

There were only 244 foreign-funded enterprises move out of Guangdong and another 28 planned to move in last year, according to the research.

Most of those small and medium-sized companies have left were labor-intensive firms making metal or plastic products, toys, garments and shoes and 90% of them are Taiwan and Hong Kong- funded enterprises.

Take Dongguan city for example, there are 40 firms moved out last year, 72.5% of whose contracted investment value less then 1 million USD and 62.5% of which are conventional manufacturers.

Statistics shows the umber of newly built enterprises and the investments are increasing in resent years. In 2005-2007, the numbers of registered foreign-funded enterprises in the province are 58762, 61999, 66789 respectively, with an increase of 6.62% year-on-year. In 2007, 179 world's Top 500 enterprises set up new firms or increase invest in Guangdong, and the contracted value reached 2.193 billion USD, up 30.69% than the previous year.

"The mass move-out of the foreign-funded enterprises has not happened in the present, but not means it won't happen in the future", said Director Liang. "As lot of enterprises are still labor intensive conventional enterprises, who are suffering rising labor and environmental costs, and have been forced to make an upgrade or go where labor is cheaper."

Liang also pointed out that the trend is accord with the province's demands of industrial upgrade, which will ease the province's pressure on population and environment, and will attracted more enterprises with high technology and high added-value.