BEIJING, May 30 -- China's waterway cargo transport logged steady expansion in April, with the total freight volume jumping 12.4 percent year on year, official data showed.

A total of 780 million tonnes of cargo was transported through waterways in the country last month, according to the Ministry of Transport.

During the first four months of the year, China's waterways handled 2.82 billion tonnes of cargo, up 7.3 percent from the same period last year.

The data also revealed that northeast China's Heilongjiang Province led the expansion among provincial-level regions in the same period, posting a year-on-year growth of 141 percent. It was followed by northeast China's Liaoning Province and east China's Shandong Province.