The share of China's tertiary industry in the country's 2004 GDP (gross domestic product) has risen from the earlier estimated 31.9 percent to 40.7 percent, up 8.8 percentage points, shows the first-ever national economic survey.

Li Deshui, head of China's National Bureau of Statistics, told a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday that results from the national economic survey indicate there was an underestimation of the tertiary industry's contribution to China's GDP in 2004.

According to the survey, the value-added of the tertiary industry was 6.5018 trillion yuan, or 2.1297 trillion more than the annual preliminary estimation.

Of the total increase of 2.3 trillion yuan in the GDP, the increase of the value-added of the tertiary industry accounted for 2.13 trillion, or 93 percent, said Li.

Li said it is the under-coverage of the tertiary industry in the regular statistics that has led to the above situation.

China had long been using the Material Product System (MPS) which was developed under the centrally-planned economic system in its national account statistics until the 1980s, resulting in very weak statistics for the service sector, said Li.

As the scope of the tertiary industry is turning wide and complex with a large number of units, and many new and dynamic services are mushrooming in China along with the rapid economic growth, it is very difficult to conduct statistics surveys, resulting in a certain degree of under-coverage, Li added.

Li mentioned the three sectors where private and individual ownership has taken a large share, including transport, storage, post and telecom; wholesale and retail trade, catering trade; and the real estate. The value-added in the three sectors was about 1.5 trillion yuan larger than the regular preliminary estimation, accounting for 70 percent of the total increase of the tertiary industry.

In addition, some of the services affiliated to manufacturing or construction enterprises are estimated but classified into the second industry, while more others are neglected, said Li.

Currently, the local governments in China are using a unified way to revalue their regional GDP according to the statistics of the national economic survey, said Li.

Li said the new statistics from the national economic survey indicate the structure of the three industries is more consistent with the actual situation in China and more in line with the general level of developing countries.

But he noted that although the revision leads to some increase in the total size of the GDP, the ranking of China's per capita GDP is still below 100th in the world.

Source: Xinhua