BEIJING — China's internet sector saw steady growth in business revenue in the first four months of the year, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed.

The business revenue of major internet and related services enterprises came in at 443.7 billion yuan (about $66 billion) in the January-April period, up 2.7 percent year-on-year, the ministry said.

The growth rate went up by 1.3 percentage points from that in the first quarter.

Specifically, the revenue of internet data service providers such as those focusing on cloud services and big data services jumped 30.4 percent year-on-year to 42.31 billion yuan in the first four months.

The companies' spending on research and development logged an increase of 10.4 percent during the period, 2 percentage points higher than that in the first quarter, according to the ministry.