China's employees in the accommodation and catering industry totaled 13.85 million by the end of 2004, the country's first national economic census has found.

Among the total, 4.29 million people work in 93,000 corporate bodies in the accommodation and catering industry, according to the economic survey bulletin released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Another 505,000 people work for 178,000 private runners in the accommodation industry, and the remaining 9.05 million work for 2.76 million private runners in the catering industry, said the survey.

The survey showed that among all corporate bodies in the accommodation and catering industry, 14.7 percent are state-owned, 18.3 percent collective entities, 50.5 percent private ones, 1.6 percent Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan-funded entities and 2.1 percent foreign-invested entities.

Among all employees in the accommodation and catering industry, 20.5 percent are state-owned, 9.9 percent collective, 38.1 percent private, 5.5 percent Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan-funded entities and 7.4 percent foreign-invested entities.

In 2004, the staple service income of corporate bodies in the accommodation and catering industry reached 164.96 billion yuan (20.6 billion US dollars), and the business income of private runners in the accommodation industry and catering industry totaled 24.34 billion yuan and 534.44 billion yuan, respectively.

The result of the survey was jointly published by the Leading Group of the First National Economic Census of the State Council and the NBS.

The first-ever national economic 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.

The survey was also expected to help policy-makers and experts have a better understanding of the overall situation of the two sectors so as to help policy-makers draft the country's economic and social development program during 2006-2010 and formulate macro-regulation policies and industrial readjustment and restructuring.

Source: Xinhua