Statistics show that foreign trade value in the interior provinces in 2008 exceeded US$100bn for the first time, up 36 per cent over the previous year. The growth rate was 18 percentage points higher than the national average and 19.5 percentage points higher than the coastal region. The interior provinces include Chongqing municipality, Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Yunnan.