(Yicai Global) April 22 -- Shanghai is expanding the scope of its support network to help more companies resume business and to keep the city’s industrial supply chains ticking as the Covid-19 outbreak that has paralyzed the city for the better part of a month gradually comes under control, the municipality’s vice mayor said today.

Some 70 percent of the 666 key enterprises named on the central government white list last week, to be given precedence in the allocation of resources in order to swiftly resume production, have reopened, Zhang Wei said at a press conference.

Next, Shanghai will do more to provide the transportation, nucleic acid testing and daily supplies needed to encourage more firms to reopen in accordance with strict Covid-19 safety protocols, Zhang said.

The latest Covid-19 outbreak and the ensuing lockdown has had a huge impact on Shanghai’s economy, said Wu Jincheng, chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.

The city is a major auto manufacturing base and a key city in the semiconductor industrial chain, accounting for 70 percent of integrated circuit materials imports, Wu said. So it is very important that production returns to normal as soon as possible to stabilize the industrial supply chains in the region and even in the country.

Chinese auto giant SAIC Motor and US electric car startup Tesla both have vehicles rolling off their Shanghai assembly lines and auto parts companies are also getting back to work, Zhang said. The number of semiconductor and chemical companies that have started manufacturing again is on the rise.

The city's industrial output value dropped 7.5 percent in March from a year earlier, slowing down the quarterly growth to 4.8 percent, less than half of last year’s 10.3 percent increase.

The number of new Covid-19 cases fell in Shanghai yesterday for the fifth straight day to 1,931 confirmed cases and 15,698 asymptomatic ones, the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission said today.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor