Harbin’s GDP reached 518.38 billion yuan ($77.78 billion) in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 0.6 percent, exceeding expectations to achieve economic recovery amid the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s according to statistics recently released by Harbin’s municipal statistics bureau.

In 2020, Harbin introduced 213 projects from outside Heilongjiang province, each with an investment amount of more than 10 million yuan, bringing the total contracted investment amount to 391.54 billion yuan.

The city’s actual use of foreign capital and direct use of foreign capital increased by 36.7 percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.

Statistics show that in 2020, the fixed-asset investment rate in Harbin achieved year-on-year growth of 2.8 percent. Investments in crucial projects snowballed, and investments in projects related to people's livelihoods continued to rise.

In 2020, Harbin had 728 projects with an investment amount of more than 100 million yuan each, an increase of 62 year-on-year. The completed investment amount was 96.86 billion yuan, accounting for 90.6 percent of the city’s fixed-asset investment and driving the city’s fixed-asset investment growth by 3.2 percentage points.

In the past year, Harbin took advantage of investment support from governments at all levels, obtaining 3.12 billion yuan from the central budget and 22.27 billion yuan in government special bond funds – twice and 2.3 times that of the previous year.

The city also obtained 5.61 billion yuan in anti-pandemic special treasury bonds, helping to drive high-quality economic development.