Chinese companies took service outsourcing orders of 11.7 billion US dollars in the first quarter, up 43.6 percent year-on-year, said a Ministry of Commerce official on Saturday.

The country's offshore service outsourcing businesses reached 8.1 billion US dollars in the first three months, up 42 percent year-on-year, said the official at a forum held in Fuzhou, capital of east China's Fujian Province.

As of March, China's service outsourcing industry had 4.46 million employees. Some 67.7 percent of them had college education backgrounds.

The orders of offshore service outsourcing which Chinese enterprises took increased to 33.6 billion US dollars in 2012, compared with 4.69 billion US dollars in 2008.