BEIJING — China issued a total of 2.7 billion organic product labels last year, the country's top market watchdog said on Sept 13.

The country sold 999,000 metric tons of organic products in 2020, with sales standing at 80.43 billion yuan (about $12.47 billion), according to the State Administration for Market Regulation.

To date, China has granted 14,000 companies nationwide more than 22,000 certificates for their organic products, the regulator said.

It added that the number of issued certificates grew by 13.52 percent on average each year between 2016 and 2020.

The administration said measures will be adopted to ramp up market regulation and expose illegal cases to target irregularities in the organic product market.