The coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Qingdao has been making continuous efforts to deepen supply-side structural reform in the financial sector, strengthen the sector's ability to serve the real economy, strengthen the prevention and control of financial risks as well as promote the sector's high-quality development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), said local authorities.

The pillar position of the financial industry has been consolidated over the past five years in the city. The added value of financial sector increased from 58.83 billion yuan ($9.01 billion) in 2015 to 75.43 billion yuan in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 9.74 percent, 2.26 percentage points higher than the average annual growth rate of GDP.

Despite the impact of the epidemic, the added value of the financial sector has maintained rapid growth. In the first three quarters of this year, the added value of the financial sector reached 62.78 billion yuan, up 8.5 percent year-on-year and 6.3 percentage points higher than GDP growth.

The sector's tax revenue reached 15.63 billion yuan in 2019, an increase of 2.9 billion yuan over 2015. Seven financial institutions were among the top 50 local tax payers. In the first three quarters of this year, the financial sector generated 13.1 billion yuan in tax revenue, up 13.2 percent year-on-year.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the annual loan volume has been over 100 billion yuan, and the average annual growth rate of deposits and loans has been 8.56 percent and 11.58 percent respectively in the city.

In the first 10 months of this year, the increase in deposits and loans in domestic and foreign currencies reached 253.55 billion yuan and 280.21 billion yuan respectively, hitting a record high.