GUANGZHOU - Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, saw a robust annual economic growth of 7.1 percent in the first half of 2019, boosted by strong fixed-asset investment and recovering trade.

Its gross domestic product totaled nearly 1.18 trillion yuan ($171.6 billion), the city's development and reform commission announced Monday.

Guangzhou's fixed-asset investment increased by 24.8 percent, the fastest growth rate since March 2013, to 303.36 billion yuan in the January-June period. Both State-owned and private investment soared 41.3 percent.

Guangzhou is accelerating to become an international hub of consumption, with its retail sales in H1 up 8.2 percent year-on-year, 0.5 percentage points higher than the first quarter.

Its foreign trade grew by 1.2 percent, 4 percentage points higher than that in Q1, as it recovered from negative growth.

Its trade with the European Union, Japan and the Republic of Korea rose by 11.5 percent, 24.3 percent and 20.5 percent respectively as the city supported the enterprises to develop diversified markets.

With the continuous improvement of the business environment, the number of market entities in Guangzhou increased to 2.18 million, up 13.8 percent year-on-year.