By Wang Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-12 09:13

Tianjin expects its service outsourcing sector to rake in 30 billion yuan ($4.07 billion) annually by 2010, the Tianjin government said yesterday.

"Service outsourcing is key to the transformation of 'manufacturing in China' to 'service offering in China'," Tianjin Mayor Dai Xianglong said at the Global Outsourcing Summit in the port city yesterday.

"The benefits of developing service outsourcing are obvious: cutting unemployment rates, spurring economic growth, driving technology innovation and facilitating industrial upgrading. By 2010, Tianjin will become one of the global service outsourcing hubs."

To encourage service outsourcing, the Tianjin municipal government will allocate 50 million yuan every year from this year until 2010 to fund talent training programs relating to service outsourcing, the mayor said.

"In addition, we will come up with more preferential policies supporting the segment in the future," Dai added.

By 2010, the value of service outsourcing will reach 30 billion yuan annually, with export volume to be $1.5 billion.

Service outsourcing will play an increasingly crucial role in upgrading China's industrial structure, and is complementary to the development of the manufacturing industry in China, Assistant Minister of Commerce Chong Quan said.

Chong said his ministry had named 11 cities where "conditions are mature" as bases for outsourcing services. They are Beijing, Dalian, Suzhou, Xi'an, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Ji'nan.

"Tianjin will be positioned as a service outsourcing national training center among the 11 cities, while Suzhou will be established as a role model," Chong said.

The Ministry of Commerce is now busy drafting supporting policies to facilitate a favorable environment for service outsourcing development in the 11 cities.

The priorities of service outsourcing development in China will go to areas such as information management, data processing and financing and accounting software, Chong said.

By 2010, China's export volume of outsourcing services is expected to double that in 2005, he added.

From a global perspective, service outsourcing will witness rapid growth and give comparative advantages to all parties concerned, Bob Hawke, former prime minister of Australia, said.

By the end of this year, the value of the service outsourcing sector is expected to hit $1.2 trillion, with a growth rate up to 40 percent annually over the next couple of years, Hawke said.

The modern service industry will play a key role in a nation's economy and is expected to boost China's social and economic development in the next 10 years, Chang Xiuze, professor of the macroeconomics institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency.