China's service sector employed 152.57 million people by the end of 2004, the government said Friday, citing results from a national economic survey.

The latest survey of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) covered transport, real estate, wholesale and retail sales, catering and other service sectors.

The survey, which formally began on Dec. 31, 2004, was designed to draw an economic panorama of the country's fast-expanding secondary and tertiary industries and complete a database covering all economic sectors.

Statistics show that the transport, storage and postal sectors employed 17.349 million people while real estate covered 4.054 million, wholesale and retail 46.778 million, accommodation and catering 13.846 million and other tertiary sectors 70.546 million.

Income in China's core real estate enterprises totaled 1.474 trillion yuan (183 billion U.S. dollars) in 2004, with a profit of 122.55 billion yuan.

Profits in real estate development and operation, logistic management, brokerage services and other real estate-related activities reached 103.52 billion yuan, 4.12 billion yuan, 4.66 billion yuan and 10.25 billion yuan, respectively.

By the year's end, the debts of the real estate enterprises accounted for 72.6 percent of their total assets, with the debt ratio of the above-mentioned sectors being 74.1 percent, 62.5 percent, 54.9 percent and 61 percent, respectively.

The NBS survey census also showed that the industry sold 453.62 million square meters of commercial houses, reaping in 1.260 trillion yuan.

Profits of the information transmission, computer service and software sector ranked first in China's service industry.

The NBS said profits of the sector totaled 167.42 billion yuan (21 billion US dollars), followed by the sector of tenancy and business services, 148.27 billion yuan, and the sector of real estate exploitation and operation, 103.52 billion yuan.

Other high-profit sectors include finance, wholesale of mineral products, construction materials and chemical products, and the wholesale of food, beverage and tobacco, whose profits reached 90.94 billion yuan, 87.19 billion yuan and 59.37 billion yuan, respectively.

The survey also showed that the accommodation and catering sectors made a profit of merely 2.75 billion yuan in 2004.

Revenues from the transport, storage and post industries reached 1.17 trillion yuan, and the NBS said total wholesale and retail sales came in at 12.32 trillion yuan.

Authorities have revealed the survey found a generally higher output of tertiary industry from previous official data.

Source: Xinhua