China Railway sees 2008 sales up 16% to $30B

[Gay Titan]

Reporting by Samuel Shen

SHANGHAI - China Railway Group (0390.HK: Quote, Profile, Research) (601390.SS: Quote, Profile, Research), the country's largest railway and highways builder, expects to generate 210 billion yuan ($30.6 billion) of sales in 2008, up 16 percent from a year earlier, on the back of China's infrastructure construction boom, the Securities Times reported on Thursday, citing Chairman Shi Dahua.

China Railway will try to cap operation costs at 188.4 billion yuan, and sign new contracts totalling 275 billion yuan for the whole year, said the newspaper, a publication affiliated with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

China Railway will also expand into real estate development and seek more orders from overseas markets such as Africa and Sotheast Asia. The company expects overseas sales to account for 10 percent of total this year, but the newspaper gave no comparative figures.

[Elliot Kane]

Coolness! Good indicator for their economy when the railways are booming

[Gay Titan]

Mass transit is always better for the environment, too.

[Elliot Kane]

True. But I suspect the main method of making money from a railway is freight. So a massive increase in profits means a lot more freight is moving, which means a booming economy.

That's my theory, at least. How true it actually is, I can only guess