Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China surged 10.5 percent year-on-year to US$53.83 billion in the first five months of this year, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Thursday.

The pace slowed from an 11.1-percent year-on-year increase in the January-April period but was still much faster than a rise of 1.7 percent for 2014.

FDI in Chinese service industries jumped 23.5 percent from the prior-year period, year to US$33.94 billion in the January-May period, accounting for 63 percent of total FDI to China, the ministry said.

The National Bureau of Statistics of China also announced on Thursday that China’s retail sales grew 10.1 percent year-on-year to 2.42 trillion yuan (US$396 billion) in May.

China’s fixed-asset investment expanded by 11.4 percent in the first five months of this year, a pace that news agency Reuters reported as being the “slowest rate in nearly 15 years in May”.

China’s factory output increased 6.1 percent from previous year in May, up from an 5.9 percent expansion in April, said the statistics bureau.