BEIJING — Chinese companies continued to boost their overseas investment in the first half (H1) of the year, official data showed on July 19.

China’s non-financial outbound direct investment (ODI) rose 58.7 percent from a year earlier to 580.28 billion yuan ($86.61 billion) in the January-June period, Shen Danyang, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said during a press conference.

In June alone, ODI expanded 44.9 percent year-on-year to 100.17 billion yuan, data showed.

“The investment structure is improving,” Shen said, citing surging capital flow into the manufacturing sector.

Around 17.59 billion dollars went to manufacturing in H1, up substantially by 245.6 percent from a year ago. Equipment manufacturing accounted for 68.4 percent of the total.

Chinese companies contracted for around $51.45 billion worth of projects in 61 countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative in the first six months, up 37 percent from a year ago.

The MOC also released China’s service trade data at the conference.

China’s service imports and exports amounted to 2.08 trillion yuan during the first five months of the year, up 22.7 percent year on year. Exports in computing, technology, financial, advertising and information service industries grew rapidly.

Service trade accounted for 18.5 percent of the country’s total imports and exports during the January-May period. The proportion was 3.2 percentage points higher than the same period in 2015, data showed.

Shen predicted the service trade will reach 2.5 trillion yuan in H1.