Shanghai's State-owned enterprises contributed to more than one-fourth of the city's GDP in 2021, officials said on Wednesday.

Output value of Shanghai's State-owned enterprises came to 1.23 trillion yuan ($169.77 billion) last year, accounting for 28.5 percent of the city's overall GDP, said Bai Tinghui, head of Shanghai's municipal State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

According to Bai, local State-owned enterprises' total assets rose 6.9 percent year-on-year to 26.27 trillion yuan in 2021, their revenue increased 6.2 percent on year to about 4 trillion yuan, and their cumulative net profit went up 4.7 percent to 352.66 billion yuan.

There were six State-owned enterprises of Shanghai appearing on the Fortune 500 list, namely SAIC, Greenland Group, China Pacific Insurance, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Shanghai Construction Group, and Shanghai Pharmaceuticals, said Bai, praising the contribution of the State-owned enterprises made to the city's economic and social development.

Abiding by innovation-driven development strategy, the State-owned companies' spending on technology rose by more than 20 percent year-on-year in the past three years.

In addition, new brands are being cultivated and time-honoured trademarks are being activating. As Bai added, the city's sales revenue generated from time-honoured products reached 105.87 billion yuan in the past three years, or a compound annual growth rate of 3.5, showing these brands' rising influence.

The port of Shanghai has been rated as the world's largest container port for 12 consecutive years, and its container throughput volume reached 47.03 million TEUs in 2021, making it the sole port with a throughput of over 40 million TEUs worldwide, said Yan Jun, president of the Shanghai International Port Group, which is the sole operator of the public terminals in the port of Shanghai.

Since its operation in December 2017, the automated terminal, or the fourth phase of the Yangshan Port project, part of Shanghai Port, has seen its handled container volume to rise steadily year-on-year, and reached 5.7 million TEUs in 2021 , approaching its designed capacity of 6.3 million TEUs, Yan said. Saving 70 percent of labor cost, the automated terminal can at the same time raise efficiency by 30 percent.

According to Yan, the automatic port intellectual production management control system, or ITOS system, was researched and developed independently by the Shanghai International Port Group, and the technology has been so far applied in 14 container terminals at home and abroad.