Software, IT service industry revenues up

Revenues of China's software and information technology (IT) service industry rose 32.4 percent year-on-year to 1.84 trillion yuan (292.23 billion U.S. dollars) in 2011, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said. The rise was 4.4 percentage points higher than the industry's average growth rate during the 2006-2010 period, according to an MIIT report released at an ongoing forum held in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. The country's software exports increased 18.5 percent from a year earlier to 30.4 billion U.S. dollars last year, the report said. The industrial scale of the country's software and information service outsourcing sector surged 39.5 percent from the pervious year to hit 383.5 billion yuan (60.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2011, with software outsourcing exports up by 40.3 percent to 5.9 billion U.S. dollars, the report said. The report attributed the expanding industrial scale to the economy's steady growth as well as rising demands from domestic and global markets.