The rapid growth of e-commerce in China has fuelled a new milestone for online trader Alibaba.

The Chinese e-commerce giant has reported its online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall have achieved combined sales of 1 trillion yuan (US$161 billion) in the first 11 months of the year.

“This is a symbolic milestone in that it shows e-commerce has become an intrinsic part of how Chinese consumers shop for goods and services,” said Alibaba spokeswoman Florence Shih.

“It’s very likely that next year, our transaction volume will be bigger than all the American e-commerce companies combined,” said Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, who predicted the milestone in September.

Alibaba, which pocketed US$3 billion during the ‘Single’s Day’ shopping promotion, has grown rapidly in the past few years as wealthy Chinese increase in number. It is estimated that Alibaba’s two online marketplaces account for around 80 per cent of China’s total online retail sales.

In this year’s first half, shipments of Taobao and Tmall were recorded at an average of 12 million packages a day, an increase of 50 per cent in the previous year.

The company forecasts a sales of more than 3 trillion yuan (US$482 billion) by 2017, which would challenge US retail giant Walmart with US$444 billion sales last year.

GB