Since the beginning of this year, Quanzhou, a city in East China's Fujian province, has introduced targeted support measures to alleviate business difficulties and effectively stimulate the real economy's vitality.

In the first three quarters of this year, the city reduced costs and burdens for enterprises by 9.69 billion yuan ($1.44 billion).

These include corporate tax burdens of 5.02 billion yuan, corporate non-tax income burdens of 223 million yuan, corporate financing costs of 377 million yuan, corporate labor costs of 2.85 billion yuan and corporate energy land costs of 1.23 billion yuan.

There were about 1.15 million market entities in the city during the period, a year-on-year increase of 25.93 percent, including 184,194 new market entities added this year.

The city guided qualified industrial enterprises to reduce the cost of electricity and natural gas for companies by participating in provincial electricity market-oriented transactions, to expand the scope of the Quanzhou's direct electricity trading market.

In 2020, 1,811 companies participated in provincial electricity market transactions, 1,468 of which were newly added enterprises in Quanzhou.

The city also reduced the natural gas consumption burden for enterprises producing materials for epidemic prevention and control and actively guided qualified industrial enterprises to enjoy the favorable policies.

Over the nine months, more than 200 enterprises benefited from policies, enjoying preferential discounts of more than 20 million yuan.

The city also actively guided small, medium and micro-sized enterprises to apply for special provincial relief funds.

As of Sept 30, 460 small, medium and micro-sized enterprises in the city received loans of 2.475 billion yuan, accounting for 70.41 percent of the city's total loan amount.