Foreign trade in services up 6.7% in H1

China's volume of foreign trade in services reached 2.38 trillion yuan ($368.02 billion), an increase of 6.7 percent year-on-year according to the Ministry of Commerce as reported by People's Daily on Tuesday.

Service exports were recorded at 1.13 trillion yuan, up 23.6 percent from a year earlier; service imports were down 1.25 trillion yuan, or 5 percent.

In June alone, trade in services reached 439.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 22.5 percent and an increase of 17.6 percent from May. Service exports stood at 216.55 billion yuan, up 41.1 percent over the same period last year, and 30.8 percent higher from the previous month. Construction services enjoyed the fastest growth of the month, with a growth rate of 62.1 percent.

Knowledge-intensive trade in services registered 1.11 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, up 13.5 percent year-on-year and accounting for 46.5 percent of total trade in services, which was a 2.8 percentage-point growth in shares of the total trade in services. Knowledge-intensive service exports reached 603.83 billion yuan in the first half, up 17.7 percent, while knowledge-intensive service imports were 502.24 trillion yuan, up 8.8 percent.

Impacted by the pandemic, trade in travel services posted 363.79 billion yuan, down 34.8 percent in the first six months year-on-year.