Alibaba Singles' Day breaks world record

The world’s biggest online shopping festival, Alibaba’s 11.11 Singles’ Day has surpassed last year's total sales.

As of 2.16pm Friday, its total sales was recorded at USD18.84 bil, with still 10 hours of the festival to go.

Last year’s total sales was recorded at USD17.8 billion.

That figure was 18 times bigger than the sales of Amazon Prime Day and 2.5 times bigger than that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

It is also bigger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of 83 countries in 2016, according to World Bank figures.

With this milestone, the Chinese e-commerce giant looks set to smash records, in a festival that is already the envy of its rivals including Amazon and eBay.

Sales include more than 260,000 Malaysian black tiger shrimps that was bough through Alibaba's fresh groceries wing, Tmall Fresh.