A bird's-eye view of Xiamen, Fujian province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

According to statistics, Xiamen enterprises inked service outsourcing contracts worth 23.55 billion yuan ($3.54 billion) from January to April, up 14.3 percent year-on-year, which was 5.5 percentage points higher than the national average.

The executed contract value totaled 9.97 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 49.5 percent.

Of the total, the offshore-service outsourcing contract value rose 1.4 percent year-on-year to 12.33 billion yuan.

In terms of business structure, Xiamen enterprises' executed contract value of information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing, and knowledge process outsourcing increased by 30 percent, 50.2 percent, and 16 percent, respectively, in the January-to-April period.

During the same period, Xiamen's offshore-service outsourcing executed contract value with members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership saw an increase of 1.9 percent year-on-year. That with countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative increased 46.7 percent year-on-year. The offshore-service outsourcing executed contract value with the United States and the European Union grew 18.8 percent and 150.8 percent, respectively.

Statistics also showed that the number of people employed in the service outsourcing industry amounted to 229,000 as of the end of April.