Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good Morning!
At the moment of coming the 6th China Software & Information Service Fair, we get together here to hold China International Software and Information Service Forum and Entrepreneurs’ Summit. On behalf of the Ministry of Commerce, I’d like to extend our warm welcome to all the guests presenting the Forum. I’d like to take this opportunity to express our heartful gratitude to all the friends taking care of and promoting the development of China software and service outsourcing.
Facing the increasingly fierce competition in the world, in order to maintain their competition advantages, the developed countries fasten the adjustment and upgrading of its industry structures focused on the development of high-tech industry such as software & information technology and modern service industries such as financial, insurance and specialized service. The labor, capital and technology intensive industries are transferred to other countries and regions on a large scale and thus forms the new industrial transfer wave. With the development of economic globalization, the level of international industrial transfer keeps rising and the trend of transferring new industries, service industry and high value added industries is obviously on the rise.
Service industry occupies more than 70% of the economy in developed countries and has become the new hot spot of industrial transfer. Financial, insurance, consulting, management and legal service are the key area of industrial transfer. At the same time, part of high-tech industry has shown the trend of transfer. With the deepening and elaborating of industry division and the development of information technology especially Internet technology, many service which could not be traded in the past now can be traded. Multi-national companies start to subcontract their non-core activities such as information technology service, data processing and R&D in the form of project outsourcing to the enterprises and specialized companies in developing countries with lower cost and specialized capability. These new international industrial transfers not only enable multi-national companies to optimize the allocation of resources and lower the cost, but also promote the developing countries receiving the transferred industries to develop its own supporting enterprises and industries, which makes the software based service outsourcing more and more active.
International industrial transfer has its own developing law. It first concentrates on those countries and regions which have great market potential, rich labor resources, improved infrastructure, strong capacity of supporting industries, solid basis of science and education, continuous and fast development of economy, long-term political and social stability, sound market economy and good investment environment.
China is exactly such kind of country. It has a world-level telecommunication infrastructure and more than 150 civil airports connecting middle and big cities all over the country. It has experienced a 30 years high speed economic growth and “Made in China” is spreading all over the world. More than 4 million students graduate from universities every year and among them 400,000 are software and information technology professionals. China is one of the lowest labor cost countries in the world. When China enters into WTO, it makes commitments of comprehensive opening market and is always a most responsible member. In 2007, its actual use of foreign investment reached at US$82.7 billion and ranks No.1 among developing countries. All of these are the specific advantages and solid basis for China to receive international industrial transfers.
China attaches great importance to the development of software and information service industry. Since 2000, Chinese government has published a series of policies and measures to support the development of software and information service. In 2007, the State Council issued “Several Opinions of the State Council on Accelerating the Development of the Service Industry and clearly stated “the information service field shall be actively developed, the development of the software field shall be accelerated, and the industrialization derived by informationization shall be persisted in so as to perfect information infrastructures. The vigorously developing trades in service field shall be made as an important part of the effort to transform the growth mode of foreign trade and raise the level of opening up. And accepting international service outsourcing shall be made as the emphasis in expanding the trades in service, and international service outsourcing in fields such as information management, data processing, accounting, technology research and development and industrial design shall be actively accepted by making good use of China's rich human resources”.
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, the contractual value of China’s software export in 2007 was close to US$1.9 billion(not include embedded software), an increase of 64.8% over the same period of previous year. There were totally 1,179 enterprises engaged in software export registration business.
In 2007, China’s software export had the following characteristics: 1.the amount of software products export was very close to the export of information technology service. Software products export value was US$930 million, rising 1.7 times from the corresponding period and taking 49.5% of total export amount; Information technology service export value was US$950 million, taking 50.5% of total export amount, a bit higher than software export. 2. Export market was showing a diversifying trend. The quantity of exporting countries (regions) reached at 94, an increase of 35 compared with the figure in 2006. Japan, USA and China Hongkong was the main market of our software export. 3. Unbalanced regional distribution. The export amount of software and information service in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Liaoning and Jiangsu was all over US$100 million, but the export amount in most provinces in middle and west areas was under US$ 10 million. 4. The construction of national software export bases and software export creative bases started to take effect. The total contractual amount of software export from 11 bases including Beijing and Shanghai was over US$1.65 billion, 88.4% of total export amount. 5. Foreign investment enterprises are the main body of export. Its software and information service export was US$1.6 billion, rising 82.4% from the corresponding period and taking 85.2% of total export amount.
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, the amount of service outsourcing including ITO and BPO taken up by China in 2007 was US$2 billion showing a rapid growth trend. In 2007 there were 167 enterprises passing third grade CMM(I) certification, 14.2% of total exporting enterprises. The personnel engaged in service outsourcing reached at 300,000, among them 250,000 people had associated degree or above.
In 2007 the service outsourcing taken up by China had the following characteristics: 1.Information technology outsourcing was the main manner, over 60% of total service outsourcing amount. The information technology outsourcing taken up by China was mainly composed of basic technology service and system utility service. The BPO undertaken by China is mainly for supply chain management service and business operation service. 2. Japan, USA and China HongKong were the main contracting countries and regions. 3. There were big difference in service outsourcing export amount among different regions and showed an obvious unbalance of regional development. The contractual value of undertaking service outsourcing in Guangdong, Beijing, Fujian, Jiangsu, Dalian, Shanghai was all over US$ 100 million. The total amount of these regions occupied more than 2/3 of the nation’s total amount. 14 service outsourcing bases took up 80.1% of the nation’s total amount. Among them the contractual value of service outsourcing taken by Beijing and Shenzhen was close to half of the nation’s total amount, much higher than other bases. 4. The industry undertaking outsourcing was concentrated in information transmission, computer service and software industry, 53% of total amount. The service outsourcing taken by manufacturing industry was 30.7% of total. The service outsourcing in other industries was comparatively backward. 5. Foreign investment enterprises were the main body of taking service outsourcing.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Although China’s software export and service outsourcing develop fast, it also exists the problems of low technology content and unbalanced regional development. We must face the fact and realize in higher level the strategic function of software export and service outsourcing for the development of our country’s software industry. We must take more effective measures to promote software export and service outsourcing. In order to create a new development environment to advance the better and faster development of software export and service outsourcing, we will double our efforts in the following aspects:
1. Making a good middle and long term development plan for software export and service outsourcing. We will actively implement “Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Implementing Some Policies and Measures for Accelerating the Development of the Service Sector”, draw up the middle and long term development plan of software export and service outsourcing, set the middle and long term goals and developing strategies for our country’s software export and service outsourcing, and formulate the specific measures to promote the development.
2. Continuously pushing the development of “Thousand, Hundred, Ten ”service outsourcing project. We will quicken the construction of service outsourcing base cities, double our efforts in training service outsourcing professionals, establish and improve public information platform of service outsourcing, support service outsourcing enterprises to enhance their international competitiveness through relative international certification.
3. Continuing to upgrade software and service outsourcing development level. We will expedite the march of software and service outsourcing enterprises to scale operation, professional operation and standard operation through the measures of self development, merging, shareholding, strategic cooperation and alliance.
4. Actively promoting the construction of intermediary organizations of software and service outsourcing. China’s software export and service outsourcing enterprises are generally small-scaled with weak international marketability. We will strengthen the construction of intermediary organizations such as China Association of Trade in Services to make use of their functions in developing international market, maintaining competition order and strengthening the industry’s self discipline for the purpose of enhancing the whole image of China’s software and service outsourcing industry.
5. Strengthening the construction of “China International Software & Information Service Fair”. The sponsors will increase the investment in “Software Fair”, improve its international and marketization level, highlight its function of negotiation and trading between enterprises, play its role as the bridge and platform.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are facing the great opportunity of a new round of international industrial transfer and the greater developing space, The Ministry of Commerce will continuously strengthen the communication and cooperation with domestic and foreign government, enterprises and intermediary organizations and push with all out attempts the fast and healthy development of China’s software and service outsourcing industry.
Finally I wish “China International Software & Information Services Forum and Entrepreneurs’ Summit” and the 6th “China International Software & Information Service Fair” a great success.
Thank you all!