BEIJING - Sales by rural supply and marketing cooperatives in the first three quarters of 2017 expanded faster than the previous year, helped by rising e-commerce revenues, official data showed Tuesday.

Total sales from all cooperatives nationwide reached 3.69 trillion yuan ($560 billion), up 15.3 percent year-on-year, 4.4 percentage points faster than the same period last year, according to the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives.

Thanks to the rapid development of rural e-commerce, online transaction turnover totaled 611.8 billion yuan, up 25.7 percent year-on-year.

Grassroots-level supply and marketing cooperatives saw fast expansion, with cooperatives at or below the county level contributing almost three quarters of total sales.

China's supply and marketing cooperatives have been a key platform for the distribution of agricultural products in rural areas in recent decades.

In 2016, sales of China's supply and marketing cooperatives stood at 4.78 trillion yuan, up 10.9 percent year-on-year.