GE Medical Systems, a unit of the United States giant General Electric, is to boost its capacity in China with the completion of its industrial park in Beijing.

Jeffrey Immelt, GE chairman and chief executive, attended the park's launch ceremony yesterday. He said the new plant will triple both the capacity of GE Medical production in China and its export volume.

The GE Medical industrial park is in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area in the city's north. It occupies 60,000 square metres and involves total investment of US$26 million.

It will serve as a base for engineering and development, manufacturing, sales and marketing, and services for medical diagnostic equipment including computerized tomography scanners, magnetic resonance imaging systems and X-ray equipment.

The industrial park will enable China to become one of the world's top bases for the production of CT scanners by providing 25 per cent of total global demand every year, said Chih Chen, president of GE Medical Systems China.

GE Medical is set to double its business volume in China in the next three years.

"We will achieve a volume of US$2 billion by 2005,'' said Chen.

GE Medical China now exports 70 per cent of its products but it wants to increase its domestic sales to 50 per cent to tap into the growing Chinese market.

As a major part of General Electric's Chinese operations, GE Medical will make a large contribution to its parent company's target of making annual purchases of US$5 billion by 2005.

Its Chinese shopping list is expected to grow by more than 50 per cent year-on-year to between US$300 million and US$400 million this year.

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