GUANGZHOU: Business innovation, particularly science based, is becoming increasingly supported in this Pearl River Delta city.

Zhu Xiaodan, secretary of the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee, spoke during the past week's political consultation conference here and outlined the city's efforts to promote innovation.

He pledged more money will be budgeted for science and technology projects, as well as to help existing local enterprises become more innovative.

Zhu said city authorities are working on policies to promote that capacity for innovation, all in an effort to speed up the city's burgeoning high-tech industry.

The new policies outline more than 30 measures for that very purpose. They include an annual budget of 1 billion yuan for supporting independent research and speeding up the high-tech industry until 2010. The money will also help improve the small-businesses market by promoting entrepreneurs' products to a larger audience.

The city is shooting for an output of more than 400 billion yuan in high-tech industrial products by 2010. The amount would total more than 33 percent of the city's gross industrial production.

Zhu said it's important for enterprises to be brave and creative in their efforts to break through innovation barriers.

"Guangzhou has a very foreign-oriented economy and boasts 107 research institutions of different levels," Zhu said. "It's high time for Guangzhou to gear up," he said.

Currently, he said, Guangzhou has just half of the high-tech production that Shenzhen has.

That can be due, in part, to the fact that for every 10,000 residents, Guangzhou has just 501 scientific and technological professionals - much fewer than the 955 in Shenzhen, 947 in Beijing, 807 in Nanjing or 689 in Suzhou. (By Zhan Lisheng)