China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) will dramatically raise its capital expenditure target for this year in response to soaring demand for petrochemical products, after posting a 50.6 per cent gain in interim net profit to 16.15 billion yuan.

Sinopec - Asia's largest oil refiner and China's No2 oil producer after PetroChina - said that the mainland's macroeconomic control measures had failed to dampen growing demand for oil products.

Sinopec will boost its spending this year by 6.12 billion yuan to 56.32 billion yuan. It will also speed up construction of key projects.