China's software industry revenue expanded at slower pace in May, with a year-on-year increase of 29.3 percent to 141.5 billion yuan (21.9 billion U.S. dollars), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Friday.

The software industry's growth rate in May was down 3.4 percentage points from April and and 1.1 percentage points from March.

The May figure took the country's software industry growth in the first five months to 345.4 billion yuan, up 28.2 percent year-on-year. The Jan-May growth was 1.2 percent lower than the same period of last year, according to MIIT.

Regarding the industry's exports, the growth rate fell sharply to 6.9 percent in May, compared with 19.7 percent in April and 20.4 percent in March.