(Xinhua/Li Bo)

The Market Supervision Bureau in Yuhuatai District, Nanjing City, issued a business license to local resident Zhang Kang on March 30, marking the 10 millionth license for individual industrial and commercial households in Jiangsu Province.

Jiangsu also became the first in China's province-level regions to reach this milestone, an indication of the booming private sector in the coastal province.

Zhang said that his previous bakery had to close down due to the impact of the epidemic. However, the government has introduced supportive measures to boost the recovery and consumer economy, giving him confidence to run a new business, a bakery scheduled to open on April 10.

Xue Qiang, deputy director of the bureau, said individual industrial and commercial households account for about 70% of the total number of market players, and about 90% of individual businesses are involved in the tertiary industry, mainly in services closely related to people's daily life.

According to the statistics, individual businesses have rebounded with a stronger growth momentum. From January 1 to March 28, the number of newly registered individual industrial and commercial households in Jiangsu reached 275,000, a 5.5% increase compared to the same period last year.

China resumed the registration and administration of individual businesses in 1979. Jiangsu had 100,000 such businesses by 1982, and the number had reached more than one million by 1993. Since the 18th CPC National Congress held in 2012, the number of individual industrial and commercial households in Jiangsu increased from 3.48 million to the current 10 million, an extraordinary growth in about 10 years.