The?newly approved Lanzhou New Area, a transportation hub that links the capitals of Northwest China's Gansu province, Qinghai province and Ningxia Hui autonomous region, is a great investment opportunity, according to Liu Weiping, the governor of Gansu province.

The new area is the first State-level one in Northwest China and aims to become a national industrial base and a demonstration region of industrial transfer. On Aug 20, the country's State Council approved the development.

Within the next few years, the area will house 90 projects totalling 70.7 billion yuan ($11.15 billion), Liu said.

He highlighted five industries in the blueprint of the new area: equipment manufacturing, petrochemical, biomedicine, high-tech, and modern service.

"We welcome investments from home and abroad. Lanzhou New Area, endowed with vast land and rich water resources, has the potential to become another ideal place in which investors can pour their money," Liu said.

Companies are struggling to make ends meet amid domestic economic slowdown and the European debt woes, as their?profits are crunched on rising labor costs and raw material prices in the country's eastern and coastal areas.

"Investing in Lanzhou area and other western regions will help them to reduce operational costs, thus shoring up confidence and bucking the trend against the economic slowdown," Liu said.

Lanzhou New Area is pivotal in the western development drive and will become a new engine to power China's economic growth, said Qin Yucai, director of the western development division under the National Development and Reform Commission.

The western development drive, also the "Go west" strategy,?covers the municipality of Chongqing and the provinces of Gansu, Guizhou, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Yunnan and the autonomous regions of Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet and Xinjiang.