A workshop of a facotry in Taizhou in East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/taizhou.com.cn]

Small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises with an annual export volume of less than 100 million yuan ($15.38 million) from Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang saw a stable growth in exports in 2020, official data show.

Exports of these companies increased by 1.9 percent in the third quarter after experiencing a year-on-year slump of 20.3 percent and an uptick of 0.6 percent in the first and second quarters respectively.

In November, their imports amounted to 8.99 billion yuan, up 49.6 percent year-on-year, according to Taizhou Customs.

Dai Hongjun, who runs a plant producing automobile shock absorbers in Sanmen county, revealed that overseas orders for them started to increase in July before maintaining a month-on-month increase of about 50 percent from August till now.

Zheng Jing, manager of the foreign trade department at Taizhou Huangyan Haiyao Artware Co Ltd, said the company has been fully booked until the second quarter of this year.

Industry insiders have attributed the quick recovery to factors including effective epidemic prevention and control measures and the rapid resumption of production.

The amount of bank loans to enterprises is a barometer of foreign trade.  In 2020, Taizhou offered 48.39 billion in loans to 1,069 small and medium-sized foreign trade companies. The assessment and approval time for banks has been shortened from the original 3-7 days to just 1 day.

Jin Shijiang, head of the Taizhou branch of Zhejiang Rural Credit Cooperative Union, said the bank has over the past few months given out 3.6 billion yuan in loans to foreign trade companies in the city, and the figure is still increasing.

In addition to financial support, the local government has created online platforms to help enterprises tap into markets overseas.

Last year, Taizhou hosted 47 online exhibitions and set up a permanent online exhibition platform, which now accommodates more than 600 enterprises.