Chongqing Municipal Statistics Bureau said that the city showed strong signs of recovery in April, with industrial output up by 13.3 per cent over the same month last year and 6.6 percentage points higher than March.

Industrial output for the first four months increased 7.4 per cent year-on-year to Rmb176.6bn, up 2.6 percentage points over that of the first quarter. The city’s pillar industries — automobiles and motorcycles, natural gas and petrochemicals, and machine engineering — accounted for nearly 60 per cent of this total.

Investment in fixed assets during the first four months of the year rose by 32 per cent to Rmb98.1bn. Investment in agriculture posted the biggest surge of nearly 183 per cent to Rmb2.7bn. Local government revenues increased by 34 per cent over March to Rmb7.82bn due to improved output and collection levels.

Officials from the bureau believe that the city’s economy has now bottomed out and is starting to climb once again.