BEIJING — Fixed-asset investment by China's centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) rose 10.5 percent year-on-year to 1.1 trillion yuan (about $170 billion) in the first half of 2021, official data showed.

The data put average year-on-year investment growth for the same period of 2021 and 2020 at 8.7 percent from the 2019 level, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council.

In June alone, central SOEs invested 291.27 billion yuan, an increase of 49.6 percent from the previous month.

During the January-June period, the country's central SOEs spent more on research and development (R&D) amid efforts to boost innovation-driven development, according to the SASAC.

Their R&D input stood at 321.04 billion yuan, up 37.4 percent year-on-year, while R&D intensity, the percentage of revenue that is reinvested in R&D, went up by 0.12 percentage points from a year earlier.

By the end of June, the average debt-to-asset ratio of China's central SOEs came in at 64.9 percent, down 1 percentage point from the same period last year, the data showed.