A Blue Paper issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing yesterday predicted China's growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) will reach 10.9 percent in 2007.

The figure is slightly higher than last year's GDP growth rate of 10.7 percent and much higher than the targeted annual rate of 7.5 percent set for China's 11th five year plan period (2006-2010).

The paper, which is about prediction on China's economic prospects in 2007, predicted that the growth rate of added value for primary, secondary and tertiary sectors will be around 5 percent, 12.9 percent and 10.1 percent respectively this year.

China's GDP totaled 5.03 trillion yuan (653 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter of this year, up 11.1 percent over the same period last year, according to latest figures provided by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The growth rate was 0.7 percentage points higher than the year-earlier level and 0.4 percentage points higher than the level for the whole of last year.