Tai'an makes way for new growth drivers

Tai'an in East China's Shandong province will continue to make efforts to develop new growth drivers, foster competitive industry clusters, and improve major project construction in 2021 to fuel the city's high-quality development, local officials said.

Tai'an will focus on major project construction to expand investment in 2021. The city will construct more than 160 key projects, with an estimated investment of more than 30 billion yuan ($4.59 billion).

The fixed asset investment in the city is expected to grow by around 3 percent for this year. A batch of projects focusing on emerging industries will be implemented.

The local government will focus on developing a number of industrial chains with core competitiveness covering high-end equipment and new materials. The share of the value-added of the "Four New Economies," which are new technology, new business patterns, new development modes, and new industry, is expected to increase by two percentage points than the previous year.

Tai'an has made progress in replacing old growth drivers with new ones. The investment in 111 municipal key construction projects reached 29.56 billion yuan in 2020, 7.6 percentage points higher than the annual plan.

Four projects were selected as provincial major research projects on growth driver transformation and received 10 million yuan in subsidies. The new materials, new energy, boutique tourism, and cultural creativity industrial clusters have made rapid development, leading Shandong province in these fields.