The number of new enterprises registered in China has surged by more than half in the calendar year to October 31 after the streamlining of the approval process, the Chinese Government says.

The number of new Chinese firms reached 2.92 million in the first 10 months of 2014, increasing by 52.6 percent from a year earlier, the Government said in its official website this week.

Since reforms to reduce administrative red tape were implemented in March, “there has been exponential growth in [the number of] new companies,” the Government said in a statement.

Before the reform, there were about 1,235 administrative approval items, which came under 60 Central Government departments. The number of items has been reduced by nearly two-thirds, with parts of the approval process either cancelled or delegated to lower-level governments.