BEIJING - China's foreign service trade amounted to 3.01 trillion yuan ($456 billion) during the first seven months of the year, up 24.6 percent year on year, the Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday.

Service trade accounted for 18.2 percent of the country's total imports and exports during the January-July period. This is 2.8 percentage points higher than 2015, according to a statement on the ministry's website.

In the first seven months, service exports stood at 1 trillion yuan, up 10.8 percent year on year, and service imports rose 33.5 percent to reach 2 trillion yuan.

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

China is aiming to adjust the structure of its foreign service trade so that it is based on more sophisticated exports, and the data suggests it is succeeding in doing so. Exports of telecommunications, computing and information services grew by 20.8 percent to 103.96 billion yuan during the first seven months.

China's foreign service trade volume grew from $362.4 billion in 2011 to $713 billion in 2015, doubling the average international growth speed, earlier data showed.

The country has set the target of lifting its service trade volume to over $1 trillion by 2020.