Shanghai's industrial production expanded 23.7 percent from a year earlier to 249.2 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) last month, and up from June's increase of 20.4 percent, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau said Monday.

The city's six key industrial sectors - information technology, vehicle, refinery, fine steel, machinery equipment and biomedicine - increased their output by an annual 27.5 percent to 165.5 billion yuan to boost the faster expansion. This reflected the city's efforts to restructure its economy and focus more on advanced manufacturing, analysts said.

Output in state-owned enterprises climbed 22.1 percent year on year, while overseas-funded factories raised their production by 32.5 percent.

Shanghai's industrial production in the first seven months of this year jumped 28.1 percent on an annual basis to 1.6 trillion yuan.

The city's economy is expected to grow at a faster rate of about 10 percent this year from the 8 percent targeted at the beginning of this year, Mayor Han Zheng said last month.

Shanghai's gross domestic product rose 12.7 percent in the first half of the year.