Alibaba to grow faster

Alibaba Group, China's top e-commerce company, is expected to exceed the combined total of Amazon and eBay in transaction value this year, Alibaba's chief strategy officer said Saturday.

Zeng Ming said that the annual transaction value of taobao.com, Alibaba's C2C (consumer to consumer) website, will reach 3 trillion yuan ($473 billion) in the next five to seven years.

Alibaba didn't mention Taobao's proportion in overall trading volume, but analysts believe that Taobao is the whole group's profit engine.

According to the annual reports of Amazon and eBay, Zeng said their transaction value were close to Alibaba's last year, but Alibaba grows faster than them this year, and Alibaba's transaction value will likely be bigger than the combination of the two US-based Internet companies.

Alibaba purchased part of the company's stock equities from Yahoo! Inc in May, and is expected to launch an initial public offering (IPO) before December 2015.