A car body is painted automatically at a Geely plant in Zhejiang province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

East China's Zhejiang province saw a 0.5-percent year-on-year increase in the industrial added value of companies above the designated size over the first seven months of this year, according to the latest figures from the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics.

Notably, the growth rate for the first seven months is 0.2 percentage points higher than that for the first six months, signaling positive growth for the province's overall industrial economy despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

This July also saw a significant rise in electricity consumption by the province's entire industrial sector, which jumped by 9.3 percent from last July and 3.8 percent from the previous month.

Electricity consumed by the province's manufacturing sector in July was 9.9 percent higher than last July and 7.5 percent higher than June. Double-digit growth in electricity consumption was shown in the automobile, electro-communication, electrical machinery, and medical industries.

To monitor confidence among entrepreneurs in economic prospects, the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Economy and Information Technology has been investigating and surveying 2,500 key industrial companies across the province on a monthly basis. The resulting entrepreneur confidence index was 62.4 in July, 2.2 more than in June.

The growing optimism among entrepreneurs has led to increased research and development activities at the corporate level. R&D expenses in the first half of this year among the province's industrial companies above the designated size rose by 13.5 percent year-on-year. R&D expenses accounted for 2.4 percent of their total operating revenue in H1, which was 0.4 percentage points higher than the same period last year.