Half of Beijing Employees Engaged in Service Trade: Statistics

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, December 10, 2001

Half of Beijing Employees Engaged in Service Trade: Statistics

As shown in the latest statistics, labors engaged in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries by the end of 2000 were 0.729 million, 2.162 million and 3.382 million respectively, with people in tertiary industry taking up 54.6 percentage of the total.

Of over 6 million employees in Beijing more than half of them are engaged in the tertiary industry, chiefly in the service trade to support their families, and the trend is growing stronger, according to the latest statistics from labor and social security department of Beijing.

The tertiary industry mainly refers to other trades except for traditional agriculture, industry and architecture, comprising two parts: service and circulation sectors. Beijing's tertiary mainly focuses on modern service trade, finance and insurance, retailing and catering industry, transportation, post and communications, as well as hi-tech industry.

As shown in the latest statistics, labors engaged in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries by the end of 2000 were 0.729 million, 2.162 million and 3.382 million respectively, with people in tertiary industry taking up 54.6 percentage of the total.

Next year will see 44,000 job opportunities created in the tertiary industry, expert predicted, while posts for the primary and secondary industries would drop by 47,200 and 31,800 respectively. However, due to the individual cause in qualification, employees laid off form traditional industries may have difficulties in filling up the vacancies offered by the tertiary industry.

Bellwether

Beijing has applied to the Chinese government to be an experimental city in opening its telecom, banking, insurance and other sectors after the WTO entry, Li Zhao, director of Beijing Foreign Trade and Economic Commission, revealed at the on-going 5th Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Cooperation Symposium held in last October.

The service industry is expected to account for some 63 percent of the city's total gross domestic product by 2005, rising from the current 58.3 percent, said Chai Xiaozhong, a member of the Beijing Municipal Development Planning Commission.

He promised that the metropolis will provide a better environment for the growth of the service sector by opening more business fields and accelerating reform on examination and approval procedures for companies.

Bright Future

Statistics show that by the end of last year, Beijing reached agreements with overseas investors engaged in the service businesses to introduce 23.2 billion U.S. dollars, which is about 63.6 percent of the amount for all the industries. Some 10.7 billion U.S. dollars has been used in developing service businesses over the past years, some 50.7 percent of the total value in used overseas investment.

Seeing bright development prospects and a sound business environment, overseas investors have shown strong interest in Beijing's service sector.

Nearly 740 overseas-funded enterprises were approved to run service-oriented businesses last year, involving a contractual investment of some nearly 3.3 billion U.S. dollars. The amount has tripled the sum of the primary and secondary industries, official statistics indicate.

Beijing has vowed to expand business fields of commerce, education, culture and medical services to bring in overseas capital, modern management skills and service technologies, strengthen cooperation in tourism, accounting, legal affairs and other sectors, which are expected to hasten the city's opening of the service industry.

By PD Online Staff Li Heng

Developing Secondary and Tertiary Industries, Promoting Rural Urbanization