Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province recently issued the city's first batch of coupons that can be used to pay for innovation and entrepreneurship services offered by agencies in the Yangtze River Delta region, an area encompassing the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Shanghai municipality.

The move comes after the city's Yinzhou district was included in a pilot program in the delta, which aims to promote the sharing of services in innovation and entrepreneurship, in the second half of 2020.

Shanghai's Yangpu district, Changzhou's Wujing district, Jiaxing's Nanhu High-tech District and Heifei High-tech District have also been included in the program.

The coupons with a face value capped at 200,000 yuan ($30,769.2) grant enterprises discounts when they access services in fields such as intellectual property, technology research and development, inspection and testing, financing and talent training in the aforementioned places.

Each district included in the program should contribute 5 million yuan every year for issuance of the coupons.

As of the end of last year, coupons worth 72 million yuan were issued. These coupons can be used in more than 580 service agencies.

Huang Kaiyong, president of Enzymaster (Ningbo) Bio-Engineering Co Ltd, which recently received a coupon worth 200,000 yuan, said that the coupons, which in the past could only be used within the province, can now be used in the Yangtze River Delta, enabling the company to seek intelligence support from more sources.

A meeting of the Yangtze River Delta alliance of entrepreneurship and innovation demonstration base recently held in Yinzhou saw the alliance's number expand to 40 and the addition of 14 service agents recognizing the coupons. These agents include some renowned universities such as Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.