The State Council, China's cabinet, on Monday released a set of guidelines to boost the development of the express delivery sector, in which it said the nation is expected to have a well-established national delivery network by 2020.
The guidelines said that the sector's annual revenue is expected to reach 800 billion yuan ($125.92 billion) by 2020, with 50 billion packages delivered each year.
The delivery system is expected to serve an online retailing sector with annual transactions topping 10 trillion yuan and a daily average of 270 million customers by 2020 , it said.
China's express delivery sector delivered 13.96 billion parcels in 2014, up 51.9 percent year-on-year, the first time that the volume of the nation's express delivery sector surpassed that of the US, according to a report the State Post Bureau released in May.
On average, 38.25 million parcels were delivered every day in the Chinese mainland, and during peak time, as many as 100 million parcels were delivered in one day, it said.
In 2014, total income in the sector was 204.5 billion yuan, up 41.9 percent year-on-year, according to the report.
But the industry has some problems to address, the State Council noted, such as low efficiency, backward infrastructure, safety loopholes and lack of competitiveness globally.
The government will encourage delivery firms to use information technology such as mobile Internet, big data and cloud computing to upgrade the sector's services and enhance efficiency, the cabinet said.
The surge in e-commerce has driven the rapid development of the express delivery sector. In the first half of this year, transactions in the e-commerce sector reached 7.63 trillion yuan, up 30.4 percent year-on-year, according to a report the China e-Business Research Center published in September.
The State Council said in the Monday guidelines that it encourages mergers and acquisitions in the sector in a bid to foster several leading firms, and it encouraged leading firms to get listed on the stock market.
Shenzhen-listed Zhejiang IDC Fluid Control Co announced Wednesday that it intends to acquire a stake in the leading express delivery firm STO Express. Media reports said that STO is seeking a backdoor listing through the deal and the company will be the first publicly listed delivery firm in China if the deal is finalized.
STO said that it had set a goal of getting listed several years ago, according to a company announcement on its website on Wednesday.
