Shenzhen Photo: VCG

The number of business entities in Shenzhen city, South China's Guangdong Province, has exceeded 4 million as of the end of March, up by 4.61 percent year-on-year in a leap for local economic rebound after the optimization of the country's pandemic response measures, the Shenzhen Administration for Market Regulation announced on Sunday.

In the first quarter, the number of newly added individual businesses rose by 45.1 percent year-on-year, data showed. The proportion of individual businesses as part of the total stood at 37.73 percent now, with the number surpassing 1.51 million. 

With its increasingly improved business environment, Shenzhen has seen the largest start-up density nationwide for eight consecutive years - 227.4 per 1,000 people, said the market regulator. 

In the foreign investment sector, the improved market accessibility of Shenzhen city attracted 972 newly registered foreign-invested companies in the first quarter, up 11.21 percent year-on-year. That was the second-highest growth rate registered in the city's history.

In 2022, the Shenzhen government launched measures to boost local economic development and announced a plan to build 20 specific industry clusters and foster eight promising industry categories focusing on smarter and advanced manufacturing.

Boosted by the government's supportive policies, 105,635 new commercial entities were registered in the first three months of 2023, up 19.95 percent year-on-year. 

The Statistics Bureau of Shenzhen on Thursday announced economic data for the first two months of 2023. Industrial added value of enterprises over the state-designated scale rose 0.8 percent year-on-year. 

Shenzhen's GDP increased by 3.3 percent in 2022 to a new high of 3.24 trillion yuan ($475 billion), with the value-added of the industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 4.8 percent and the fixed asset investment in the city increased by 8.4 percent.

China's official manufacturing purchasing managers' index came in at 51.9 in March, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on Friday. The index stood at 52.6 in February, the highest since May 2021, a very positive sign for the domestic manufacturing sector. 

Global Times