According to a senior industry official, China’s e-commerce sector will grow rapidly over the course of the next five years, with a year-on-year sales growth of at least 32%. Transaction volumes are set to reach 18 trillion yuan ($2.8 trillion) by 2015, up from 4.5 trillion in 2010. This will correspond to more than 9% of the country’s total retail sales of essential and consumer goods, up from 3.3% today.
Dong Baoqing, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and spokesman for the promotion of IT, said: "E-commerce has been listed as a strategically promising industry for coming years, and the foundation of the Five-Year Plan is to continue to encourage its development and updating and provide more favourable policies to support its sound expansion”.
Areas identified as of strategic importance include expanding the scope of e-commerce to traditional industries such as heavy industry, logistics and tourism, improving online sourcing and retailing capability, boosting cross-border and mobile e-commerce and creating a safer and more trustworthy e-commerce system.