According to a report recently released by provincial authorities, Shanxi province's investment in science and technology further increased in 2019.

The province invested 19.12 billion yuan ($2.91 billion) in research and experimental development funds in 2019, up 8.8 percent year-on-year. The ratio of the investment to the regional GDP was 1.12 percent, an increase of 0.02 percentage points compared with the previous year.

The investment in basic research funds was 1.04 billion yuan, year-on-year growth of 10 percent. In comparison, the investment in applied research funds and experimental development funds were 1.95 billion yuan and 16.13 billion yuan, respectively, down 8.6 percent and up 11.3 percent year-on-year.

From the perspective of market entities, enterprise R&D expenditures totaled 15.67 billion yuan, up 7.9 percent year-on-year; government-owned research institutions' R&D expenditures were 1.65 billion yuan, a decrease of 6.3 percent year-on-year; the R&D expenditures of colleges and universities reached 1.6 billion yuan, increasing 32 percent year-on-year.

For the industrial sector, the R&D expenditures of nine industries whose R&D expenditures exceeded 500 million yuan accounted for 83.1 percent of the total R&D expenditures of industrial enterprises above designated size (those with annual revenue of more than 20 million yuan).

Among 11 cities in Shanxi province, seven invested more than 1 billion yuan in R&D funds. Taiyuan and Datong cities' R&D investment ratio to their GDP exceeded the provincial average.