The number of market entities registered in Ningbo neared 1.27 million – the third most in East China's Zhejiang province, only behind Hangzhou and Jinhua - as of Aug 29.

Given Ningbo's permanent population and the number of market entities, there is one business owner out of every seven people in the city.

In August alone, 15,793 market entities were registered in Ningbo, the fourth highest in the province, only behind Hangzhou, Jinhua and Wenzhou.

Zhejiang is currently home to 9.06 million market entities, an uptick of 7.3 percent year-on-year. Specifically, 3.25 million are enterprises while the rest are individually-owned businesses.

The top three investment industries in the province are retail and wholesale, manufacturing, hotel and catering services.

From January to August, over 750,000 individually-owned businesses were registered in Zhejiang, up 3.63 percent year-on-year.

Over the same period, 484,600 individually-owned businesses were dissolved, a year-on-year decrease of 9.06 percent.

The policies rolled out by the provincial government to facilitate the development of individually-owned businesses in May have been effective, as evidenced by the considerable decrease in the number of individually-owned businesses that were dissolved.