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Service industries business receipts for third quarter 96
The business receipts in most of the service industries continued to show year- on-year increases in value terms in the third quarter of 1996.
The financing (except banking) industry registered the fastest growth, by 24%. The communications and the business services industries also grew by 19% and 15% respectively.
These are the provisional figures on business receipts indices for service industries released today (Monday) by the Census and Statistics Department.
The strong growth in business receipts in the financing (except banking) industry was mainly due to an increase in the stock market turnover.
The significant increase in the communications industry was related to the rapid expansion of mobile telephone services; while the growth in the business services industry was attributable to marked increases in the demand for legal services and various miscellaneous business services.
Meanwhile, considerable increases in business receipts were also registered in the following service industries: banking (+10%); hotels (+9%) and transport(+8%).
On the other hand, business receipts in the wholesale industry dropped by 3% in value terms. This was due mainly to a decrease in business receipts in wholesale of raw materials and semi-manufactures.
Compared with the second quarter of 1996, and bearing in mind that such comparison might be affected by seasonal factors, business receipts in most of the service industries recorded increases of various magnitudes. Among them, business receipts in the transport and business services industries registered the most rapid growth, by 12% and 10% respectively.
On the other hand, business receipts in the hotels and wholesale industries dropped by 3% and 1% respectively. The decrease recorded in the hotels industry was probably affected by seasonal factors.
Table 1 presents provisional business receipts indices for service industries for the third quarter of 1996 and revised indices for the second quarter of 1996, with the quarterly average of business receipts in 1992 taken as 100.
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