Shanghai ranked top among the 16 Yangtze River Delta cities in the region's first service economy index report, which was released Wednesday by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

But the city should not bask in its top place spot too much as it is lacking in some areas in the service industry, including human resources, volume of service trade and service consumption, the report said.

Conducted by Jiao Tong's Antai College of Economics and Management, the research report worked out indexes for the development, structure, efficiency and potential of 16 Yangtze River Delta cities of Shanghai and those in neighboring Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province.

The index figures were derived at after special calculations according to the cities' service sector statistics. A higher index indicates a better development environment.

Shanghai topped the ranking with a comprehensive index of 2.2906, far higher than the runner-up city of Nanjing's 0.4898 and Wuxi's 0.3969 in third place.

Six cities - Nanjing, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Ningbo and Changzhou - formed the second-tier service economy city group. Shanghai was behind Wuxi, Ningbo, Shaoxing and Suzhou to rank eighth in service sector professional ratio.

Chen Xian, the research program leader and director of Jiao Tong's China service economy studies center, said lack of service industry human resources was a challenge for Shanghai.

He said the ''percentage of high-level service professionals was small compared with the migrant population.''