Online retail sales, an important force in the fight against poverty, jumped 26 percent year on year to total 301.45 billion yuan (about 46.49 billion U.S. dollars) across China's 832 national-level poverty-stricken counties last year, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Thursday.
In the fourth quarter, the impoverished counties saw online retail sales surge 30.4 percent from a year earlier to 94.57 billion yuan, MOC spokesperson Gao Feng told a regular press conference.
The counties were home to about 3.07 million online retailers at the end of last year, up 13.7 percent from the end of 2019, said Gao.
China vowed to eliminate absolute poverty by the end of last year, 10 years ahead of the schedule for poverty-eradication set by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
