From January to February, Xiamen's firms signed service outsourcing contracts worth about 13.35 billion yuan ($1.94 billion), up 14.5 percent year-on-year, 4.2 percentage points higher than China's average during the period, and the executed value hit 3.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.1 percent. 

During the same period, the offshore service outsourcing contract value and the executed value reached 7.34 billion yuan and 2.21 billion yuan, respectively, up 17.3 percent and 8.8 percent year-on-year.

The business process outsourcing (BPO) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) rose 29.3 percent and 20.6 percent, respectively, year-on-year. Among them, the service outsourcing value of industrial design, human resource management and transportation maintenance showed the fastest growth, increasing by 457.7 percent, 110.5 percent and 41.2 percent, respectively, year-on-year.

In terms of the international market, offshore executed service outsourcing with the European Union (EU) members and China's Hong Kong realized a year-on-year increase of 17.5 percent and 16.5 percent, respectively.

Private enterprises accounted for 14.9 percent of the total executed service outsourcing value during the period, and foreign-invested enterprise offshore service outsourcing accounted for 50.2 percent of the total, a year-on-year increase of 55.7 percent.

Furthermore, by the end of February, Xiamen's service outsourcing industry recruited a total of 244,000 employees, among which 143,000 have a college degrees or above, and account for 58.8 percent of the total.