China's direct investment in overseas markets in 2006 has been revised up to 21.16 billion U.S. dollars with 17.63 billion from non-financial sectors, adding 3.53 billion from financial sectors, making up 16.7 percent of the total.

The previous figure of non-financial outbound investment, released by the Ministry of Commerce, stood at 16.13 billion U.S. dollars.

It is the first time three administrations -- the Ministry of Commerce, the National Bureau of Statistics and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange -- jointly released China's direct outbound investment report.

By the end of 2006, more than 5,000 Chinese investment entities had established almost 10,000 companies overseas in 172 countries and regions. Almost half of these companies were in Hong Kong, the United States, Russia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Australia and Germany.

Combined outbound investment reached 90.63 billion U.S. dollars, 82.8 percent of which went to non-financial sectors, including business services, mining and wholesale and retail sectors while 17.2 percent went to financial sectors.

"Based on our survey of more than 4,000 companies that have invested overseas, 70 percent of the outbound investment made a profit or broke even," said Chen Lin, deputy head of the department of Foreign Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce.

In 2006, China's overseas-registered companies in non-financial sectors earned a sales revenue of 274.6 billion U.S. dollars and paid 2.82 billion taxes to local governments.

About 40 percent of the outbound investment last year was channeled through mergers and acquisitions.

According to statistics from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, China's direct outbound investment in 2006 ranked 13th in the world, accounting for only 2.72 percent of the world total.