GE banks on growth in Latin America General Electric expects revenue growth in its industrial business in regions such as Latin America to overtake that of its traditional growth engine of Asia, led by China and India, in 2012. With China's growth decelerating from its peak of more than 10 per cent, GE said it expected its business in resource-rich regions such as Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and ­Australasia to grow 20-25 per cent compared with 10-15 per cent for Asia. "From a small base, we will grow a lot," said Reinaldo Garcia, head of GE's Latin America business. When you think about Latam, with the 34 countries, we have now a lot in Brazil and Mexico, we have done less in the other countries and now we are really putting efforts and resources into developing these opportunities in these other countries as well. While GE said China remained a vital market with robust growth across its main businesses, the trend underlines the growing importance of other regions as the Chinese economy matures. China this week cut its annual growth target for the first time in eight years, recognising that the second-largest economy will slow. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said the government's target for growth in 2012 was 7.5 per cent, the first time it has dropped below 8 per cent since 2004. GE is predicting that 50 per cent of its industrial revenue will come from growth markets in the next 10 years compared with 37 per cent last year. Latin America is one of the company's biggest regions in terms of absolute sales outside the developed countries and is one of its fastest-growing, with revenue from its industrial business up 36 per cent last year compared with 29 per cent for China. Mr Garcia said he expected revenue of $10bn from Latin America this year compared with $8.2bn in 2011, excluding extraordinary items. The company's Latin American revenue from its industrial business was bigger than that of China last year at $6.6bn against $5.8bn. Among the investment opportunities in Latin America is an investment plan from Petrobras, Brazil's state-owned oil group, to spend $225bn on exploitation of offshore oil and gasfields over the next five years. Other projects in the region include mining, oil, petrochemicals and power projects. GE vice-chairman John Rice, head of the group's global growth and operations, said China remained one of the world's most important markets but he said the group was changing the way it operated there, seeking partnerships with state-owned enterprises, for instance, rather than only seeking to manufacture or sell products there. "We shipped about 400 jet engines to airlines based in China last year so we are still selling a lot of stuff in China but the nature of how we do business there is changing in some subtle ways," he said.