About 12,000 companies will be closed or cut production capacity due to low efficiency, low competitiveness and high pollution, according to the mayor.

The city's government will also find ways to help businesses cut costs by as much as 48 billion yuan annually, Huang said.

"It's hard to imagine a country's or a city's economy breaking down. The real economy is the foundation of the virtual economy such as the internet and finance," Huang said. "We are following the nation's top authorities and have already found ways to help cut enterprise costs through such measures as tax reductions."

To ensure supply quality, Tianjin is working hard to boost emerging industries, technological innovation and advanced services and will encourage companies to upgrade technologies, improve business operations and optimize their industrial structure, Huang said. He added that Tianjin's total fixed-assets investment would increase by more than 12 percent this year.

Statistics from the city's development and reform commission show that 603 large projects－with investment of more than 50 million yuan for each and 300 billion yuan in total－were launched in the first quarter of this year, in the fields of manufacturing, infrastructure and services.