BEIJING - Revenue from China's express deliveries in January rose 29.5 percent year on year to 5.81 billion yuan ($880 million) with volume reaching 250 million items, up 48.3 percent, the State Post Bureau announced Thursday.
Domestic inter-city items accounted for more than half of?the month's revenue and business was most active in eastern regions, according to the bureau.
Express companies were seriously shorthanded during the Chinese Lunar New Year shopping season, indicating the country's logistics sector is lagging behind its booming e-commerce market.
China's online retail sales last year doubled from 2009 to reach 513.1 billion yuan, according to a report by China's E-commerce Research Center.
The number of people using the Internet in China rose to 457 million at the end of last year, up 73.3 million from a year earlier, according to a report released by the China Internet Network Information Center in January.
