Shanghai's gross domestic product totaled 3.27 trillion yuan (480 billion U.S. dollars) last year, up 6.6 percent year on year, the municipal statistics bureau announced Tuesday.
The reading was slightly lower than the 6.9-percent increase in 2017, but kept pace with the country's 6.6-percent growth last year.
The tertiary industry was the largest contributor, accounting for 69.9 percent of the total.
Value added in the primary industry dropped 6.9 percent, while growth in secondary and tertiary industries was 1.8 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively.
Shanghai's strategic emerging industries, such as information technology, biotechnology and high-end manufacturing, saw their total output exceeding 1 trillion yuan, up 3.8 percent year on year.
Retail sales of consumer goods rose 7.9 percent to 1.27 trillion yuan in 2018. Strong growth was posted in the city's online sales, whose volume reached 150.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.8 percent, up 6.2 percentage points.
The city's fixed assets investment posted year-on-year growth of 5.2 percent.
The city's per capita disposable income stood at 64,183 yuan last year, up 7.1 percent year-on-year in real terms after deducting price factors.
Its foreign trade reached 3.4 trillion yuan last year, an annual increase of 5.5 percent, as the city hosted the first China International Import Expo in November.
In breakdown, the city's import and export volumes grew 6.4 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively.
Last year also saw a bounceback of foreign investment from an 8-percent decline in 2017. Shanghai received 17.3 billion U.S. dollars of foreign investment last year, a year-on-year growth of 1.7 percent, according to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.
Foreign investors signed 5,597 projects, pledging a total contractual investment of 46.94 billion U.S. dollars, up 41.7 percent and 16.8 percent, respectively.
The business service sector, led by the regional headquarters of multinational corporations, attracted 5.52 billion U.S. dollars of foreign investment, up 10.5 percent year on year, accounting for 32 percent of the total.
In 2018, Shanghai added 45 regional headquarters of multinational corporations and 15 foreign-funded research and development centers.
A total of 128 foreign-invested manufacturing projects were launched in Shanghai last year. For instance, U.S. electric carmaker Tesla Inc. started to build a gigafactory in Shanghai, becoming the first to benefit from a new policy allowing foreign carmakers to set up wholly-owned subsidiaries in China.
However, the city's real estate sector saw foreign investment declining for the third consecutive year, by 18.6 percent.
"As China's economy turns from pursuing high-speed growth to high-quality development, the country has entered a new phase where it focuses on improving the quality and optimizing the structure of foreign investment," said Liang Guoyong, an economic affairs officer with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
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