The 135th session of the China Import and Export Fair, better known as the Canton Fair, will be held in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong province, from April 15 to May 5, the Ministry of Commerce announced on Monday.

Speaking at a news conference in Beijing, Vice-Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said that the exhibition area of this session of the Canton Fair is 1.55 million square meters, with 28,600 businesses participating in the export exhibition. Among them, more than 4,300 are new exhibitors. 680 companies are participating in the import exhibition at the Canton Fair.

Preliminary statistics showed that 93,000 buyers from 215 countries and regions have completed pre-registration, and more than 220 large multinational corporations and business institutions, such as Walmart Inc. from the United States and Metro AG from Germany, have confirmed that they will organize delegations to attend the event, according to the Guangzhou-based China Foreign Trade Center, one of the Canton Fair organizers.

These figures all exceed the scale of previous sessions for the same period, said Wang.

The China Import and Export Fair started in 1957. This biannual event is the country's largest comprehensive trade fair with the longest history and holds the largest number of overseas buyers and product categories.