The economy of Baotou – located in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region – has continued its growth trend from the previous year and it is understood to have achieved a great start to the current year.

In the first quarter, the city's GDP reached 87.02 billion yuan ($13.38 billion), a year-on-year increase of 8 percent.

What's more, the city's fixed asset investment in Q1 soared by 51.7 percent year-on-year. Projections are that from January to April, fixed asset investment will increase by about 60 percent.

This year, the city plans to implement 902 major projects with government investment of more than 50 million yuan and enterprise investment of more than 100 million yuan. As of April 15, some 875 projects had resumed work – 97 percent of the total and an increase of 45 percentage points year-on-year.

It is expected that by the end of April, all major projects will have resumed work and the investment rate will reach more than 50 percent in the first half of the year.

In the first quarter, the city attracted 1,422 new companies to come and settle there. It signed contracts for 387 new projects with a contracted total investment of 382.68 billion yuan.

Of these, 35 were Fortune 500 companies and another 23 listed companies signed contracts.

In order to promote the high-quality economic development of the city, plans are for it to promote the construction of a first-class government affairs environment, legal environment, industrial environment and urban environment.