BEIJING -- A total of 250,703 funding applications for natural-science research projects were made last year, according to the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The number of applications in 2019 was 25,351 higher than in 2018, representing an increase of 11.25 percent, according to the NSFC.

The foundation supported 45,192 projects from 1,469 institutes in various fields, with direct funding of 28.08 billion yuan (about $3.97 billion) and indirect funding of 4.94 billion yuan.

The NSFC plans to allocate 29.5 billion yuan to finance science projects this year, with an estimated indirect funding of about 5.6 billion yuan.

As of May 20 this year, a total of 269,700 applications had been received, an increase of 12.03 percent over the same period in 2019.