A man polishes bicycle rims at a production facility in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. [Photo by Hu Jianhuan/For China Daily]

Around 408,000 small and micro-sized enterprises were established in Zhejiang last year, up 12.4 percent year-on-year. This brings the total number of such enterprises in the province to 2.22 million, or 87.7 percent of all enterprises in the province.

This was a faster growth rate than Guangdong, Shanghai, and Jiangsu.

The number of newly-established agricultural companies in the province was about the same as in 2018, while industrial companies grew by 5.4 percent and service companies grew by 18.5 percent.

Small and micro-sized enterprises in Zhejiang received strong support last year. Statistics showed that their loan balance had reached 3.67 trillion yuan ($532.41 billion) by the end of November 2019, up 13 percent year-on-year and 389.6 billion yuan more than at the beginning of the year. The province also reduced taxes by 17.32 billion yuan for enterprises in the first 10 months of the year and provided them with access to 73,000 research facilities and devices.

Wenzhou, Huzhou, Jinhua, and Taizhou saw the fastest growth in number of enterprises, while Jiaxing, Zhoushan, and Lishui saw a slight decline.

The environmental protection and healthcare industries saw faster growth in the number of small and micro-sized enterprises, with the number of new companies increasing by 56.6 percent and 56.3 percent to 6,116 and 29,798, respectively, while the number of new financial companies declined by 52.54 percent to 3,548.

5G technology helped spur the digital economy. Among the new small and micro-sized enterprises, 44,000 were from the digital sector, up 35.6 percent year-on-year and creating 923,000 jobs.

The provincial government announced that it will promote the commercial application of 5G technology and planned to build 30,000 5G base stations in 2020 and 80,000 in 2022, and that all 5G application areas will have such stations by 2025.

The number of manufacturing enterprises saw an increase of 45,000, up 4.8 percent year-on-year. This included 9,050 high-end equipment manufacturing companies, up 22.8 percent, and 19,000 traditional manufacturing companies, up 15.2 percent.

Local authorities said they will work to maintain the stable growth rate of small and micro-sized enterprises in 2020 and ensure their major economic indexes grow in a healthy range.