Zhejiang enterprises buck downward trend

In 2020, enterprises in East China's Zhejiang province saw their total assets and operating revenues grow 10.6 percent and 9.8 percent year-on-year respectively despite the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest statistics released by the Zhejiang Administration for Market Regulation.

The operating rate for Zhejiang-based enterprises was 77.8 percent in 2020. The functioning businesses employed 21.32 million people.

The top three industrial sectors with the highest operating rates were finance (89.9 percent), transportation & warehouse logistics & postal services (84.7 percent), and manufacturing (82.4 percent).

As much as 10.5 percent of enterprises in the sectors of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, and fishery ceased to function in 2020, the highest non-operating rate among all industrial sectors.

As of the end of 2020, Zhejiang was home to 43,600 foreign-funded companies. Total assets of financial-sector foreign companies reached 2.9 trillion yuan ($446.6 billion), while total operating revenues of foreign manufacturers stood at 1.4 trillion yuan that year.

Zhejiang was home to 2.25 million small- and micro-sized companies in 2020, up 8.9 percent from the previous year. A quarter of them were located in the provincial capital of Hangzhou, and 36.5 percent of them achieved positive profits in 2020, down 1.7 percent year-on-year.

As many as 205,000 Zhejiang-based companies, or 7.6 percent of the total, were focused on digital economy in 2020. They generated 9.9 percent of the province's corporate operating revenue.

The number of Zhejiang manufacturers was 562,000 in 2020, up 4.4 percent year-on-year. Their combined assets grew 11.9 percent year-on-year to 11.5 trillion yuan, while their combined net profits surged 27.6 percent to 403.33 billion yuan.