BEIJING — China’s postal sector made over 85.34 billion yuan (about $12.62 billion) in revenue in January, up 21 percent year-on-year, official data showed.

The business volume of the sector totaled 118.4 billion yuan last month, a year-on-year increase of 19.4 percent, according to the State Post Bureau (SPB).

Due to the Spring Festival holiday, the growth of revenue and business volume slowed down from 43.5 percent and 71.4 percent respectively in the same period last year.

China’s express delivery firms handled 4.52 billion parcels in January, surging by 13.5 percent from the same period in 2018. Their total revenue went up 19.9 percent year-on-year, reaching 59.68 billion yuan.

About 100 million parcels were delivered overseas, up 6.5 percent from the same period last year, according to the bureau.