LHASA, May 29-- Tibet has launched an e-commerce project to help the region's companies expand, local authorities said on Friday,

The 600-million-yuan (98 million U.S. dollars) project includes an online shopping website, a commodity trading platform and an asset exchange platform, said Zhou Hu, deputy director of the Department of Industry and Information Technology in Tibet.

The platforms will also offer data to the government for economic regulation.

Tibet's first third-party payment platform will also be established under the project.

The online platforms will be built with the same standards as other leading e-commerce websites in China, said Jia Jingpeng, general manager of Tibet property exchange.