Aerial view of Lishui Economic and Technological Development Zone [Photo/lishui.gov.cn]

Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce released the assessment results of the 2019 comprehensive development level of economic development zones on July 17.

Lishui Economic and Technological Development Zone ranked 14th among all national development zones in Zhejiang, which is its best result in the annual evaluation since the development zone was upgraded to national level in 2014.

The zone scored 343.6 points in the evaluation, in which, economic scale, development quality, comprehensive benefits and growth rate increased by 19.86 points, 48.80 points, 20.29 points and 79.57 points over the previous year. The comprehensive benefits ranked fourth and the growth rate ranked first in the province.

The development zone is focusing on building five industrial clusters – precision manufacturing, health and medicine, semiconductors, fashion, and digital economy – three platforms – ecological industry science and innovation platform, Yangtze River Delta integrated mountain and sea cooperation platform, and the China-Europe international cooperation industrial platform – as well as three bases – intelligent equipment and robot characteristic industrial base, aquatic ecological synthetic leather demonstration base, and rolling function parts production base.

In 2019, the development zone received $53.98 million in foreign investment, accounting for 44.7 percent of the city's total foreign investment, and saw 634 million yuan ($90.77 million) in research and development, with a year-on-year growth of 52.89 percent.

A total of 19 new national high and new technology enterprises, 56 provincial small and medium-sized science and technology enterprises and five provincial research and development centers were added to the development zone last year.