A night view of Laowaitan, a signature pedestrian street in downtown Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/WeChat account: nbfb0574]

The total retail sales of consumer goods in Ningbo reached 423.83 billion yuan ($65.2 billion) in 2020, representing an annual growth rate of 7.1 percent during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, official data shows.

The strong results are primarily due to the city's sustained efforts in facilitating consumption upgrading over the five-year period with the ultimate goal of building itself into a global consumption hub.

The local government issued coupons worth 597 million yuan amid the COVID-19 epidemic, which effectively stimulated consumption recovery.

Not long ago, two pedestrian streets - Laowaitan and Nantang Old Street - in the city made the list of Zhejiang high-end pedestrian streets.

The city witnessed robust growth in online retail sales. Statistics show that Ningbo's online retail sales (excluding cross-border e-commerce) rose at an average annual growth rate of more than 26 percent, from less than 100 billion yuan in 2016 to about 250 billion yuan in 2020.

During the same period, online spending among residents from the city grew from 80 billion yuan to 160 billion yuan, an average annual increase of 18 percent.

Presently, Ningbo has constructed 71 e-commerce industrial parks that accommodate 20,000-plus enterprises.

Among the industrial parks, 37 cover an area of over 10,000 square meters and 11 have a sales volume of more than 1 billion yuan.