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Quarterly business receipts indices for service industries
Business receipts in most of the service industries continued to show year-on- year increases in value terms in the first quarter of 1996, according to statistics released today (Friday) by the Census and Statistics Department. The banking industry registered the fastest growth, by 17%. The communications industry also grew by 15%.
The strong growth in business receipts in the banking industry was mainly attributable to an increase in net interest income while that in the communications industry was related to the rapid growth of mobile telephone services. Meanwhile, considerable increases in business receipts were also registered in the following services industries: storage (+13%); hotels (+12%); transport (+10%) and financing (except banking) (+10%).
Business receipts in import/export, retail, insurance and business services also increased, by 6%, 5%, 2% and 2% respectively.
On the other hand, business receipts in the wholesale industry dropped by 2% in value terms. This was due mainly to a decrease in business receipts in wholesale of raw materials and semi-manufactures as well as clothing, footwear and allied products.
Compared with the fourth quarter of 1995, business receipts in the financing (except banking) industry registered a strong growth of 16%. This was mainly due to an increase in the stock market turnover in the first quarter of 1996.
However, business receipts in many industries recorded decreases of varying magnitudes. This was probably affected to some extent by seasonal factors, as the first quarter of a year is usually the low season for trade-related activities such as wholesale, import/export, transport and storage.
Table 1 presents provisional business receipts indices for service industries for the first quarter of 1996 and revised indices for the fourth quarter of 1995, with the quarterly average of business receipts in 1992 taken as 100. Also tabulated are comparisons of the results of the first quarter of 1996 with those of the fourth quarter of 1995 and the first quarter of 1995.
Table 2 shows the time series of quarterly business receipts indices. Annual indices are also included.