BEIJING, May 20 (Xinhua) -- China's service outsourcing industry sped up its recovery from the novel coronavirus epidemic in April, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed on Wednesday.

Chinese firms inked service outsourcing contracts worth about 374.39 billion yuan (about 54.58 billion U.S. dollars) during the first four months, down 6 percent year on year.

The decline was 12 percentage points lower than in the first quarter, showing a recovery in the sector.

The executed contract value stood at 247.65 billion yuan from January to April, with a year-on-year increase of 10.6 percent.

Of the total, offshore service outsourcing contracts reached 230.97 billion yuan in value during the period, down 10.3 percent year on year.

Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring a party outside a company to perform services and create goods that traditionally were performed in-house by the company's own employees and staff.

In China, service outsourcing is typically divided into three sub-sectors: information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing.