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The 15th East China Commodity Fair opened in Shanghai on Tuesday, attracting over 3,300 domestic companies and 126 companies from 15 countries and regions.

Regarded a barometer for the country's foreign trade, the Shanghai fair, an event held at the beginning of every year, has witnessed total business deals worth 24.7 billion US dollars in the past 14 years.

Pan Longqing, head of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, said at the fair that domestic private companies are playing a main role in the fair in recent years. In the previous fair, over half the participants came from domestic private companies.

According to domestic experts, the six-day Shanghai fair will be a forecast to China's total foreign trade in 2005. The fair's nine hosting provinces and municipality based in east China produced the country's 45 percent GDP last year, and they also contributed half of the country's total exports.

China now ranks the third worldwide in foreign trade. In 2004, China's foreign trade topped one trillion dollars for the first time, with its growth rate in exports and imports both exceeding 30 percent.