BEIJING, Jan. 3-- China will step up efforts to promote the transformation and upgrading of outsourced services, with the view to achieving better structure and higher quality of the services sector, the State Council's executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang decided on Friday. Premier Li Keqiang stressed the significance of growing high-tech and high-value-added outsourced services in advancing structural adjustments and driving industrial upgrading. Data from the Ministry of Commerce shows a sound momentum of growth in the outsourced services. Between January and July last year, Chinese firms signed service outsourcing contracts worth 722.58 billion yuan (about 102.62 billion U.S. dollars), up by 7.4 percent year-on-year. "Developing outsourced services helps keep foreign investment and employment stable, and also contributes to economic upgrading. Though our country started relatively late in outsourced services, we have made fairly fast progress and have our own advantages," Li said. The Friday meeting decided on steps to build greater capacity in undertaking outsourced services at a faster pace as part of the effort to facilitate economic upgrading. Information technology will be applied to promote "Services Plus." New service models such as crowdsourcing, cloud outsourcing and platform subcontracting, and new types of industry such as service-embedded manufacturing will be developed. Efforts will be made to enhance the competitiveness in undertaking outsourced services in pharmaceutical research and development, design and accounting, and to strengthen the capability of contracting and delivering such services. |