The increase rate of registered market entities in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province saw the third highest in Zhejiang in the first six months of this year, Taizhou Daily reported on July 21.

As of the end of June, Taizhou was home to 687,388 market entities, a year-on-year increase of 15.79 percent, of which 206,697 are corporations, a 13.44 percent year-on-year increase, and 469,871 are individual businesses, a 17.58 percent year-on-year increase.

"This year we have been optimizing the approval of market entities and have rolled out policies to support them," said Zhang Danbin of the Jiaxing market supervision and administration bureau.

The Jiaxing bureau has improved the efficiency of starting a business online, streamlined approval procedures, and waived the cost for the first official seal made by newly-registered companies.

It has published 12 measures to support the resumption of local companies amid the COVID-19 as well as other measures to help small and micro-sized companies overcome difficulties, including waiving taxes and dues, reducing operating costs, and improving services.