BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhua) -- The volume of online transactions in China could surge 55 percent to 1.7 trillion yuan in 2007, 1.69trillion yuan of which is expected to come from transactions between corporate businesses, Xinhua learnt from a recent conference on e-commerce.

The conference was held on Thursday by the E-business World Magazine, which is run by the China Electronic Commerce Association, a nationwide non-profit organization under the Ministry of Information Industry.

The trade volume of China's e-commerce, which includes B2B(business-to-business) trading, B2C (business-to-consumer) trading and C2C (consumer-to-consumer) trading, has grown by 50 to60 percent over the past couple of years.

China's total online transactions grew 52 percent over 2005, to1.1 trillion yuan in 2006, according to a report released by China Center for Information Industry Development Consulting (CCID Consulting).

Currently, 99 percent of China's 42 million companies are small and medium-sized, yet only three percent of them made deals over the Internet, according to the report.

Despite the fast growth, experts warn that China's e-commerce still faces challenges stemming from a lack of policies and a credit system.