As learned from the Ministry of Commerce total external logistics in China reached 38.4 trillion yuan in 2004 increasing by 30 percent year on year.

A study released by the Commerce Ministry, China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing (CFLP) and China Logistics Information Center says that external logistics demand in China kept growing fast last year. The growth increased by 2.9 percentage points over the previous year. The logistics demand coefficient - the ratio between national GDP and total logistic volume reached 2.8, which means the development of national economy is increasingly relying on logistics. Every unit of GDP output needs 2.8 units of logistics volume as support. It is considerably higher than the average 1.6 for the "eighth five-year plan" period and 1.7 for the "ninth five-year plan" period.

However, the Chinese logistics industry still has some distance to go before reaching the level of developed countries. Logistic costs take too high a proportion of the GDP. In the year 2004 total costs of China's external logistics reached 2.9 trillion yuan, which was 21 percent of the GDP, far higher than that of developed countries.

By People's Daily Online