Outsourcing has become a fast-growing sector in the service industry and will contribute more to the province's economic growth in the next few years, said Zhang Weiguo, deputy governor of East China's Jiangsu Province.

Zhang made the remarks in response to the national strategic blueprint to develop the outsourcing industry. The blueprint aims to provide new and diversified modes of economic growth to keep up with global trends and achieve sustainable development.

China's economy has grown rapidly in the last 15 years, and service industry outsourcing has in recent years emerged as a new economic growth point, particularly in Shanghai, Tianjin, Dalian and Shenzhen.

"We have great advantages in technology and human resources to compete and have a big share in the outsourcing service market," Zhang said.

One of the fastest developing and wealthy provinces in the country, Jiangsu boasts a large number of hi-tech enterprises and companies in information technology, software, electronic information and telecommunications.

Statistics show the province yielded revenue of $200 million from outsourcing services in 2006.

"We are not very happy with the figure in view of our economic strength because it was only a small fraction of our gross domestic product last year," said Zhang.

The provincial government is determined to take measures to boost the development of this new sector.

Apart from Nanjing, the provincial capital and one of a dozen State-designated outsourcing base cities, six cities - including Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou - were recently named provincial-level outsourcing base cities by the provincial department of foreign trade and economy.

Fifty companies out of 1,000 from these cities were chosen to be key outsourcing enterprises.

                                                                                                    Source: China Daily