Average annual salaries in China's non-private sector rose 12 percent in 2009 to 32,736 yuan (4,835 U.S. dollars), the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.

But the growth rate was 5.2 percentage points less than that in 2008, said a statement on the NBS website.

The survey covered 1.56 million non-private enterprises involving 118 million employees. The non-private sector includes state-owned enterprises, joint-stock firms and foreign-funded companies.

Financial enterprises reported the highest salaries, about 70,265 yuan on average in 2009. IT enterprises ranked second with a yearly average salary of 59,919 yuan.

In contrast, China's private sector's annual average salary only rose 6.6 percent to 18,199 yuan in 2009.

The growth rate was seven percentage points lower than that in the previous year.

The survey covered 640,000 private firms, about 16.1 percent of the country's total 3.97 million private enterprises.