BEIJING, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- China's service trade mounted to a new high in the first seven months of this year as the government has made more efforts to further bolster and open up the service sector.

The Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Wednesday the country's service trade rose 9.9 percent year on year to stand at 2.98 trillion yuan (nearly 436 billion U.S. dollars) in the first seven months.

Service exports increased 14.6 percent to 987.5 billion yuan, while imports gained 7.7 percent to 1.99 trillion yuan, resulting in a deficit of over 1 trillion yuan.

Service trade accounted for 15.1 percent of China's total foreign trade in the first seven months, up 0.1 percentage points year on year. The service trade expansion has outpaced the growth rates in goods trade in the same period.

MOC official Li Yuan attributed the historic high growth to China's stable and positive economic growth, a rapidly growing service sector and policy support from the government.

The structure of service trade continued to optimize. Trade of emerging services, such as telecom and insurance, rose 20.3 percent year on year in the Jan.-July period, 10.4 percentage points higher than the growth of service trade.

Trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing and accounting.

China has taken steps to improve the development of trade in services, including gradually opening up the finance, education, culture, and medical treatment sectors.