The Gansu Provincial Postal Administration has announced that Gansu province expects to build 2,000 village post offices to boost its rural e-commerce in 2016, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Jan 24.

According to official statistics, Gansu's express delivery volume saw an increase of 30 percent during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) with the growth rate of average annual revenue reaching 33.5 percent.

There are 1,656 township post offices in Gansu making express delivery accessible even to some remote areas.

Gansu already has 3,000 village post offices and the 2,000 new stations are expected to facilitate sale by farmers of local specialties and promote e-commerce, said Yuan Haidong, director of the provincial postal administration.

To facilitate villagers' receipt and distribution of packages, Gansu plans to build 1,000 express service points across the province with some distributed in rural areas, said Yuan.

Building rural post offices and express service points has been taken as a basic step for cities' governments in Gansu to shake off poverty in rural areas. For example, Longnan city's government has encouraged and supported rural deliverymen and in the cities of Dingxi and Jiuquan, express delivery supermarkets and post offices have been built in villages.

Edited by Peter Nordlinger