China's service outsourcing industry has maintained rapid growth in the first five months of this year while providing new jobs, especially for many college students graduating this summer.

At an industrial forum held Tuesday in Hangzhou, capital city of China's eastern Zhejiang Province, Vice Minister of Commerce Ma Xiuhong said the value of service contracts nationwide reached 5.5 billion U.S. dollars in the first five months of this year, up 139 percent year on year.

Another 1,105 service outsourcing companies were set up during this period, providing jobs to 182,000 people, of which 124,000 were new college graduates, Ma said.

"China's service outsourcing industry has been on a fast development track," Ma said, citing the year 2009 when the global financial crisis hit, but Chinese service outsourcing companies still managed a 152 percent rise in the value of their contracts, which exceeded 10 billion U.S. dollars.

The sector also provided 700,000 job posts last year. Among them, 500,000 jobs were taken by college graduates, accounting for about 12 percent of the total number of jobs taken by graduates that year, Ma said.

The number of service-outsourcing companies in China topped 8,000 in 2009, according to Ma.

Many countries are now also looking at the information and technology-based service outsourcing business as a significant starting point to refine their economic development patterns and strengthen their industrial abilities.

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