Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is expected to soon surpass Wal-Mart as the world's largest retail platform, with total trading…

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is expected to soon surpass Wal-Mart as the world's largest retail platform, with total trading volume in the current fiscal year exceeding 3 trillion yuan (US$463.3 billion), the company said on Monday

Wal-Mart Stores Inc posted net sales of US$478.6 billion for its fiscal year ending Jan 31

The latest trading volume figure for Alibaba is equivalent to Sichuan province's gross domestic product last year, when the province's GDP ranked sixth on the Chinese mainland

Zhang Yong, the company's CEO, said in Hangzhou that the figure was recorded on the company's business-to-customer platform Tmall, consumer-to-consumer platforms Taobao and Rural Taobao, and group-buying site Juhuasuan as of 2:58 pm on Monday

Zhang said he expected the company will achieve an annual trading volume of 6 trillion yuan by 2020, and that "in 2024, we want to be a business platform serving 2 billion consumers and tens of millions of enterprises at home and abroad"

According to Zhang, the company will strive to combine cloud computing and big data technologies with the Internet and the Internet of Things, as well as consumer terminal equipment, to spur its development

Citing the National Bureau of Statistics and McKinsey And Co figures, Gao Hongbing, director of AliResearch, said that of Alibaba's 3 trillion yuan in total trading volume, about 660 billion to 1.17 trillion yuan is newly increased consumption

"Online shopping has been an important engine to promote consumption, which meets the nation's strategy of promoting domestic demand," said Gao