The big picture looks good for Hai'an, with progress made in its economic development in the first quarter. [Photo/WeChat account: hafbwx]

Facing the challenging COVID-19 epidemic situation, Hai'an – a county-level city administered by Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province – has laid equal emphasis on epidemic prevention and economic development and the strategy appears to be paying off.

In the first quarter of 2022, it has achieved stable progress in its economy. The general public budget revenue in that period came in at 2.1 billion yuan ($318.7 million), a year-on-year increase of 1.17 percent.

Hai'an's industrial taxable sales in Q1 topped nearly 55 billion yuan ($8.3 billion), while total industrial electricity consumption in the period reached 1.18 billion kilowatts, up 8.92 percent year-on-year.

In recent years, Hai'an has also provided impetus to its modern service sector. During the Jan-March period, taxable sales of the service industry in Hai'an exceeded 27 billion yuan.

To reduce the impact brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Hai'an rolled out a series of support policies and took measures to stabilize the foreign trade market. In the first two months this year, the import-export volume of the city hit 3.64 billion yuan, up 34.8 percent on the same period last year.