CHINA will continue to develop its service industry and make logistics a key sector to support further industrial expansion, said senior officials with the National Development and Reform Commission yesterday.
The government is also watching the rising cost of production material and may take measures to guarantee a steady supply, officials said during a briefing on the country's nine-month industrial growth.
"China's overall industry production maintained stable growth, with slower expansion in a few high energy-consuming and polluting sectors," said Zhu Hongren, deputy chief of the Bureau of Economic Operations under NDRC, China's top planning agency.
"The service industry, which is greener, kept a double-digit growth boosted by sectors such as logistics," Zhu added.
Industrial output rose 18.5 percent in the first nine months, accelerating 1.5 percentage points from a year earlier.
The profit reaped by industrial enterprises surged 37 percent year on year to 1.56 trillion yuan (US$208 billion) through August, when figures grew 7.9 percent from a year earlier.
Production of steel, cement, calcium carbide and ferrous metals all reported a slowdown in growth after the government closed some below-par factories to reduce energy consumption and pollution.
Sales of China's service industry expanded 11 percent to 6.4 trillion yuan through September, or 38.7 percent of the gross domestic product.
The logistics sector posted earnings of 1.13 trillion yuan through the third quarter, an increase of 17.6 percent from a year earlier.
"Fixed-assets investment in logistics increased 18.8 percent to 943 billion yuan, which is expected to further boost the development of the industry," said Wang Huimin, an NDRC official.
However, the rising price of raw materials puts the government under pressure to strengthen economic controls.