BEIJING -- China's service outsourcing industry reported strong momentum in the first two months of 2021, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed on Thursday.

Chinese businesses inked service outsourcing contracts worth a total of 171.57 billion yuan (about $26.45 billion) during the period, representing year-on-year growth of 72.3 percent from 2020 and 24.2 percent from 2019, the data showed.

Of the total, offshore service outsourcing contracts reached 87.57 billion yuan in value, rising 43.4 percent from a year earlier.

The executed contract value of offshore service outsourcing with the Belt and Road Initiative partner countries reached 11.99 billion yuan, surging 85.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the data.

The executed contract value of foreign-funded enterprises in offshore service outsourcing skyrocketed 127.7 percent from 2020 to reach 28.97 billion yuan in the first two months, accounting for 45.9 percent of China's total offshore service outsourcing business.

Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring an external party to perform services and make goods, tasks traditionally undertaken by a company's employees.

In China, service outsourcing is typically divided into three sub-sectors: information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing, and knowledge process outsourcing.