CCTV News: The China Small and Medium Enterprises Association announced on April 10 that in the first quarter of 2025, China's Small and Medium Enterprises Development Index rose sharply, the highest since 2020.

In the first quarter, China's small and medium-sized enterprise development index was 89.5, up 0.5 points from the fourth quarter of last year. Small and medium-sized enterprises in the social service industry, industry, transportation industry and information transmission software industry performed the best. The operating rate of small and medium-sized enterprises continued to rise, and the proportion of enterprises that had fully started construction increased by 11 percentage points compared with the fourth quarter of last year.

Ma Bin, Executive Vice President of China Small and Medium Enterprises Association: The growth has been achieved for two consecutive quarters, and it has also reached the highest level since the first quarter of 2020. The reason is that the package of incremental policies deployed by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee last year continued to release the effects, and the favorable conditions for revitalizing holiday consumption and seizing the start of various places also promoted the accelerated recovery of the production and operation conditions of small and medium-sized enterprises in the first quarter.

A survey by the China Association of Small and Medium Enterprises showed that the development expectations of SMEs continued to improve in the first quarter, with slightly lower costs, driving significant improvement in corporate benefits. From the market index, among the eight industries surveyed, the five industries, including information transmission software, social services, wholesale and retail, transportation and industry, rose significantly, indicating that market demand has been steadily improving; in addition, the investment intention of enterprises in five industries including social services and construction have improved.

Seize market opportunities Small and medium-sized enterprises accelerate their transformation to intelligence

In the survey, the China Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Association found that since the beginning of this year, many small and medium-sized enterprises have seized market opportunities at the beginning of the year, while also accelerating their transformation to intelligence, digitalization and greenness.

A survey by the China Small and Medium Enterprises Association showed that the effect of the package of incremental policies last year continued to appear in the first quarter, and at the same time, the start of many new projects in various places has also brought more market opportunities to small and medium-sized enterprises since the beginning of the year.

In Mianyang, Sichuan, many small and medium-sized enterprises showed a prosperous production and sales throughout the first quarter.

In more regions, under the guidance of policies, small and medium-sized enterprises are accelerating the transformation and upgrading to intelligence and digitalization. The latest technologies such as artificial intelligence have also begun to contribute to production, promoting the significant improvement of corporate competitiveness.

The latest data shows that there are currently more than 600,000 scientific and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises in my country. In the next step, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will accelerate the construction of a mechanism to promote the development and growth of specialized, specialized and new small and medium-sized enterprises, and help enterprises show new achievements in developing new quality productivity and promoting new industrialization.