BEIJING — China's service outsourcing industry reported stable growth in the first nine months of 2019, the latest data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) showed.

Chinese businesses inked service outsourcing contracts worth 886.4 billion yuan (about $125.29 billion) during the January-September period, up 4.4 percent year on year.

Of the total, offshore service outsourcing contracts reached 538.04 billion yuan in value, rising 11 percent from a year earlier.

The industry's structure improvement picked up with rapid growth of emerging productive service outsourcing business, including consulting, testing, e-commerce platforms and other fields, the ministry said.

Service outsourcing with countries along the Belt and Road totaled 65.28 billion yuan during this period in terms of the fulfilled contract value, MOC data showed.