China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) saw steady growth in the first three quarters of 2019, according to the Zhoushan Municipal Statistics Bureau.

Zhejiang FTZ, which was launched in 2017, covers an area of nearly 120 square kilometers and has abundant shoreline resources.

The zone mainly focuses on commodity investment facilitation and trade liberalization, with the oil industrial chain as its core.

In the first three quarters of this year, over 5,100 new enterprises were registered in the zone, 36 of which were foreign-invested, bringing in $1.2 billion in foreign capital.

A total of 2,238 companies engaged in the oil industry were registered and brought in nearly 75 billion yuan ($1.7 billion) in capital.

The trade value of oil products in the zone surpassed 221 billion yuan during the period.

The settlement amount of bunker fuel oil amounted to 4.26 million metric tons, up 4.5 percent year-on-year.

Enterprises in the zone paid a total of 6.81 billion yuan in taxes, a year-on-year increase of 13.9 percent, accounting for 41.2 percent of the tax collected throughout the city.

The cross-border RMB settlement in the zone reached nearly 85 billion yuan, up 53.1 percent year-on-year.

Cross-border RMB settlement refers to all cross-border transactions settled in RMB, the official currency of China.