The industrial added value of Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province is estimated to have exceeded 500 billion yuan ($74.6 billion) in 2019, a recent government meeting said.

Meanwhile, the added value of industries above a designated scale in the city grew by 6.4 percent year-on-year.

The city's investment in fixed assets rose by 8.1 percent last year, among which industrial investment soared 10.5 percent, bucking the decline seen over the past two years.

Ningbo has also emerged as a magnet for domestic investment. Official data shows that the city attracted more than 136.8 billion yuan in investment from across the country in 2019.

The strong results are largely due to efforts by authorities to optimize business climate and stimulate innovation.

In the first three quarters of last year, the local authorities slashed 32.41 billion yuan in taxes and fees for local enterprises.

Meanwhile, the city also made strides in administrative reforms. In 2019, a total of 16.18 million administrative service applications were handled, more than 70 percent of which were completed online.

The city's R&D investment accounted for roughly 2.8 percent of the city's GDP, an increase of 0.23 percent over the previous year.

Local government's financial expenditure on science and technology stood at about 12.416 billion yuan in 2019, up 58.6 percent year on year.

A total of 4,859 industrial enterprises in the city reported spending on R&D, ranking first among cities at the sub-provincial level.

In 2019, the city completed 21.265 billion yuan worth of technology transactions, an increase of 54.8 percent year on year. More than 47,200 patents were registered in the city over the 12-month period including 5,075 invention patents.