
East China’s Anhui province has achieved positive results in boosting the service industry since 2016, local authorities said at a press briefing on Wednesday. The service sector had a net increase of 623,000 employees between 2016 and 2019, or 2.2 times that of the secondary industry. It has emerged as the major force behind the province’s job growth, according to Zhao Jinbao, deputy head of the Bureau of Statistics of Anhui Province. The value-added output of the service industry rose from 1.06 trillion yuan in 2015 to 1.89 trillion yuan in 2019, representing an average annual increase of 9.4 percent. The growth rate was 1.2 percentage points higher than the province’s GDP growth and 1.6 percentage points higher than the national average. The value-added output accounted for 50.8 percent of the GDP last year, up from 44.5 percent in 2015, Zhao said, adding that the proportion exceeded that of the secondary industry. Tax revenues from the service industry made up 54 percent of the provincial total in 2019, up 3.6 percentage points from 2015. Meanwhile, 40.5 percent of the province’s employees worked in the service sector, compared with 39.5 percent in 2015. The value-added output of the service industry increased 2 percent year on year in the first three quarters this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the official said.
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