Aiming to become the "Eastern Hanover Fair," the fifth Shanghai International Industrial Fair will open on Thursday with a 12 percent rise in the number of overseas exhibitors.

The fair, held from Thursday to Tuesday at Shanghai New International Expo Center in Pudong New Area, managed to attract 1,131 companies and institutes to showcase their latest products and technologies, said Li Liangyuan, vice secretary general of the Shanghai municipal government, one of the organizers of the annual fair

Li revealed that 317 overseas exhibitors, including Siemens, BP and GM, from more than 20 countries and regions will attend the fair, whose theme is information technology and industrialization. The number is 12 percent more than last year's.

Last year, deals worth 43.525 billion yuan (US$5.24 billion) were sealed during the fair, a rise of 39.24 percent over that in 2000. The deals involved high-tech products, assets, technology exchange and foreign investment.

The Hanover Fair, held in the German city annually, is the world's largest technology exhibition that draws thousands of visitors and companies.

The Shanghai Assets and Equity Exchange will put on the block more than 1,500 projects worth millions of yuan at the fair.

The exchange, which was founded in 1994 as a platform for the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, has short-listed 250 projects, said Wang Long, vice president of the exchange.

"Most of the projects that will be put for sale are state-owned assets, which are concentrated in the manufacturing and processing sectors," said Wang.

"The sellers of these assets mainly come from Shanghai and its neighboring provinces as well as the northeast provinces, such as Heilongjiang and Liaoning."

Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces will put on the hammer some mega-projects, each of which is valued at around 6 billion yuan, a sign that the northeast pro-vinces will speed up the restruc-turing of the state-owned assets.

This is in line with the government policy to resurrect the prosperity of the country's northeast industrial bases.

Also, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, the country' biggest state-owned conglomerate that makes and sells drug, is expected to ink deals to sell part of its 4.4 billion yuan worth of assets.

"Other assets will be sold through the public bidding after the fair as there are lots of potential buyers," said Zhang Hailong, the exchange's president.

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