A staff performs research in a lab in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/cnnb.com.cn]

The added value of high-tech industries in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province amounted to 77.09 billion yuan ($11.86 billion) in the first quarter of this year, the highest among all cities in province, according to data from the Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Science and Technology.

The amount represents a yearly uptick of 1.7 percent and accounts for 58.4 percent of the total achieved by industrial enterprises above the designated size in the city over the three-month period.

Over this period, investments worth 16.37 billion yuan were made in Ningbo's high-tech sectors, up 11.8 percent year-on-year.

The robust growth in high-tech sectors will bolster the city's campaign to develop itself into a global manufacturing innovation hub, said an official from the Ningbo municipal bureau of science and technology.

The increased R&D spending has played a major role in fueling companies' development. From January to February, R&D spending among industrial enterprises above the designated size in Ningbo hit 7.16 billion yuan, an increase of 14.1 percent. The city's technical trading volume in the first three months of this year expanded 16.6 percent year-on-year to 9.02 billion yuan. 

High-tech products produced in Ningbo have been widely used in the Beijing Winter Olympic Games as well as the Shenzhou XIII spaceship. The city has also developed the nation's first liquid helium-free magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system.

Preferential policies such as tax exemptions rolled out by the government have also spurred  innovation. In 2021, 1,239 high-tech enterprises were exempted from corporate income tax of about 6.41 billion yuan, an increase of 16.3 percent over the previous year.