Postal services to help curb rural poverty

China's postal sector pledges to provide the country's rural population with wider service accessibility and contribute to the country's poverty alleviation, the country's postal service regulator said on Monday.

Ma Junsheng, head of the State Post Bureau, said at a news conference held by the State Council Information Office that the country launched a three-year project in January, aiming to offer express delivery services to all qualified administrative villages by 2022.

The project is designed to promote sales of local farm produce, and specialties will be further developed via rural e-commerce channels and the postal network, which will also provide rural residents with services such as online purchasing, he added.

The bureau will push the project forward in villages in developed areas with better conditions and provide delivery services to 60 percent of administrative villages by the end of this year, he said, adding that 45 percent of villages so far have such services.

Ma also noted that China's postal and delivery enterprises have facilitated the country's anti-poverty efforts by creating jobs and promoting farm produce sales in recent years.

"The postal and express industry has become an important force to support agricultural development, improve rural connectivity and serve the farmers and a new distribution channel to boost the delivery of industrial products to the countryside and the agricultural products to the cities, as well as a vital source to help the poor increase their incomes," he said.

Ma said that major delivery companies have created more than 1.5 million jobs for impoverished areas since 2014.

During the first eight months of this year, the postal and express industry has created more than 150,000 jobs in rural areas and helped 100,000 financially-strapped households in 504 national-level poverty-stricken counties increase incomes by over 100 million yuan (US$14 million), he added.

The country's delivery companies nurtured 163 projects designed to promote sales of local farm produce and specialties by the end of last year, with each handling more than 1 million parcels annually, he said, adding that 37 of them boasted over 10 million deliveries each year.

Ma also noted that 15 billion parcels were delivered in rural areas last year, and that figure rose to 20 billion in the first eight months of this year.

China has achieved its goal of covering all administrative villages with direct postal services, and express delivery outlets have been set up in 97 percent of the townships across the country, according to the bureau.