Delivery business up 30 pct in rural China

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China's rural areas have witnessed an increase in delivery services in the first four months this year, with business volume up 30 percent year on year, faster than in urban areas, statistics from the State Post Bureau showed on Friday.

Rural delivery services have become a new growth point for the sector. The business volume of rural delivery services is seven percentage points higher than in urban areas.

For villagers, the rural e-commerce business has also become a popular way of increasing their incomes. Rural online retail sales hit 357 billion yuan (51.6 billion U.S. dollars) in the first three months of this year, up 19.5 percent year on year, faster than the national average.

With numbers growing, the quality of the rural delivery business, supported by fresh investment and more participants, is enhancing, and new modes of development are emerging.

An express deliveryman picks up packages for villages, Xiangyang, central China's Hubei Province. /VCG Photo

Target 2022: Full coverage of delivery services in rural areas

The country's postal service regulator vowed Thursday that all administrative villages will enjoy delivery services by 2022, and delivery service outlets will be set up in every township across China.

As of April, the coverage of delivery outlets in villages and towns reached 92.6 percent.

The central government will accordingly offer support for the improvement of rural delivery services, including providing infrastructure investment and targeted local funds, according to an official guideline.

Villagers pack sugar products in Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province. /VCG Photo

Robust growth in delivery sector

A total of 17.07 billion packages were delivered throughout the country in the first four months of 2019, up 24.8 percent year on year.

The average daily delivery volume hit 160 million in the industry, and the number is close to five billion on a monthly basis.

In April alone, delivery revenue reached 59.25 billion yuan, an increase of 26.8 percent year on year, and 4.92 billion packages were delivered, up 31.1 percent year on year.