13 December 2004 - Delegates at a recent forum in Beijing on power equipment and investment have forecast that China will be the largest market for power equipment in the world.

At the forum, Dr Zhu Baohe, director of the energy and power research centre at the forum's host Guohai Securities, pointed out that with the basic balancing of power supply and demand in the coming years, investment on the power transmission and distribution would be the priority for Chinas power investment
policy.

Zhu noted that at present, the growth of investment on the building of power plants in the country is higher than that of power grid construction, showing a structural imbalance of power investment.

According to Zhu, it is expected that investment in power grid construction will be 110bn yuan ($13.2bn) in China in 2004, and such investment in 2005 will go up to 140 billion yuan. And in 2006, the amount of investment on power grid construction will surpass that in the building of power plants.