China's courier sector rose 20.5 percent to 635.04 billion yuan (about 91.53 billion US dollars) on a year-on-year basis in the first 10 months of this year, said the State Post Bureau (SPB) on Tuesday.

The sector raked in 478.05 billion yuan of revenue from January to October, up 23.5 percent year on year, with the volume of parcels delivered amounting to 39.43 billion, the SPB said.

Cross-border courier services saw a 38.4-percent year-on-year increase in business volume in the first 10 months, with 880 million parcels delivered.

In October alone, the sector's business revenue grew 19.6 percent to 53.42 billion yuan, slightly faster than the 18.5-percent growth rate in September. The volume of delivered parcels saw a 25.2-percent increase to 4.69 billion, 1.1 percent higher than that in September.

Guangzhou became the first city with the volume of delivered parcels amounting to 3.97 billion in the first 10 months, followed by Shanghai with a total of 2.76 billion delivered packages and Jinhua's 2.75 billion.

The top three cities with the sector's most business revenues in the first 10 months were Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, of which revenues were respectively 80.87 billion yuan, 37.58 billion yuan and 34.59 billion yuan.

After China's "Double 11" shopping festival last Sunday, much like the Spring Festival travel rush in the courier sector, the volume of express orders going through the major e-commerce platforms in one day increased 25.12 percent year-on-year to 1.35 billion, and a record high of 416 million orders were handled by post-courier service companies, up 25.68 percent from last year, based on the data from SPB.

According to the data from Alibaba's Rookie Network, the first 100 million parcels of 2018 Tmall "Double 11" shopping festival were delivered at around 2:00 p.m. on November 13, about five hours faster than last year and six and half days quicker than five years ago.

With joint efforts from the General Administration of Customs of China and Rookie Network to achieve more efficient customs clearance procedures in cross-border e-commerce trade, the same-day and the next-day delivery were realized more than ever, allowing Chinese consumers to receive their cross-border goods in a shorter time after the  "Double 11" shopping festival this year.

(With input from Xinhua)