Recently, data released by the Xiamen Municipal Bureau of Commerce, Fujian Province show that in the first quarter of this year, the contract value of service outsourcing undertaken by enterprises in Xiamen City reached 19.45 billion yuan and the execution value was 6.4 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year growth of 13.8% and 38.4% respectively, with increasing rates 3.5 and 21.2 percentage points higher than the national growth rates.

In terms of US dollars, from January to March this year, Xiamen enterprises undertook service outsourcing contracts which are worth 2.98 billion US dollars, with an execution amount of 980 million US dollars, up by 18.2% and 44.2% respectively.

Business structure-wise, the execution amount of offshore information technology outsourcing (ITO), business process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) undertaken by Xiamen enterprises increased by 42.0%, 21.3% and 38.6% respectively.

Concerning the international market, the execution amount of Xiamen’s offshore service outsourcing from the United States, the European Union and Hong Kong accounted for 71.0% that of the city’s offshore service outsourcing, with year-on-year increases of 20.1%, 23.9% and 21.8% respectively. The contract value and execution amount of offshore service outsourcing undertaken by Xiamen from the BRI countries increased by 9.7% and 40.5% respectively.

As for the nature of enterprises, the execution amount of offshore service outsourcing undertaken by private enterprises rose by 31.7% year on year, with a higher growth rate than that of foreign-invested enterprises.

In terms of employment absorption, by the end of March 2022, Xiamen’s service outsourcing industry had absorbed 229,000 employees, 133,000 of which have a university degree or above, accounting for 58.2% of the total.