Ecology, infrastructure

Along with economic growth, the autonomous region has also seen improvements in ecology and infrastructure in the past 10 years, Chu said.

Since 1998, under the support of the State, the region has launched a number of ecological construction projects, ranging from natural forest protection, desert control and returning farmlands to forests and grasslands.

By the end of 2005, Inner Mongolia had invested a total of 17.3 billion yuan in ecological improvement.

By the end of last year, the region's forest area reached 20.5 million hectares, an increase of 1.2 times compared with that in 1947, while forest coverage increased to 17.6 percent from 7.7 percent in 1947.

At present, Inner Mongolia has 190 nature reserves, with a total area of 13.2 million hectares, including 21 State-level reserves that cover an area of 3.33 million hectares.

With respect to infrastructure construction, the region's railway and highway lengths hit 8,058 km and 83,000 km respectively by the end of 2006. It now has 10 airports. Its well-developed irrigation system serves 2.78 million hectares of farmland. In addition, the number of fixed and mobile phone users have reached 14.15 million, while Internet users number 1.45 million.

As the region's strong sectors, the husbandry product processing, energy and metallurgy industries have maintained rapid growth in recent years, Chu said.

During the 10th Five-Year Plan, milk output in the region increased from 798,000 tons to 6.91 million tons, and output of meats grew from 1.43 million tons to 2.3 million tons. At present, Yili Group and Mengniu Group are the two leading diary producers in the nation.

During the same period, the region's coal production increased from 72.47 million tons to 256.08 million tons and power generation volume grew from 43.92 billion kilowatt-hours to 107 billion kilowatt-hours.

The region's steel output also increased from 4.24 million tons to 8.06 million tons in the same period.