Cross-border e-commerce to be boosted

Lai Viet Anh, deputy director general of the Vietnam E-commerce and Digital Economy Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), revealed that cross-border e-commerce comprises about 20-25 per cent of global e-commerce value.

Anh made the remark at an online workshop on developing e-commerce organised by the government's news portal on August 14.

As Vietnam is an export-oriented economy with abounding potential for the development of textile apparel, footwear, rice and agricultural products, the room for cross-border e-commerce development proves enormous, Anh added.

This is mirrored through the fact that the export revenue through cross-border e-commerce platforms, which approximated $3.3 billion in 2022, is anticipated to surpass $11 billion in 2027.

However, reaching this goal requires a slew of consistent measures from both state management agencies, businesses, and local people in promoting commodities export via e-commerce platforms.

Anh explained that the ministry is about to submit the government the country’s e-commerce development master plan for the next five years, in which e-commerce aims to bring Vietnamese export items to the global markets, particularly supporting small- and medium-sized enterprises and producers to sell globally.

“Digital technology application and digital transformation is crucial in e-commerce," Anh said. "The customers can easily trace product origin, geographical indication, ensuring the products meet requirements on environmental protection. These issues need to be tacked through digitalisation, applicable to every stage in production to ensure the competitiveness of Vietnamese-made products in the global markets,” said Anh.

Tran Minh Tuan, director general of Digital Economy and Digital Society under the Ministry of Information and Communications, said that transboundary e-commerce now eyes huge potential for development.

"Vietnam’s tech firms have now established diverse business-to-business e-commerce platforms to connect with global e-commerce sites such as Amazon, Alibaba, or Timo to grow the presence of Vietnamese products on global marketplaces, directly linking buyers to sellers as well as producers," Tuan said.

Currently, the MoIT is working with major e-commerce sites at home and abroad to boost the sale of domestically made items, particularly agricultural produce.

Tran Tuan Anh, managing director of Shopee Vietnam, revealed that the site is helping more local firms to expand global reach, particularly to markets in Southeast Asia in the near term.

“We aim to reach the target that from now to the end of 2024 to bring the products of a thousand local businesses to regional markets leveraging e-commerce advantages. In the near future, the figure is expected to reach tens of thousands firms,” said Tuan Anh.

Figures by the MoIT show that the total revenue from e-commerce reached an estimated $13.2 billion in the first six months of 2024, up 28 per cent on-year.

During the period, the total revenue from the five top e-commerce sites in Vietnam - Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, Sendo, and TikTok - approximated $6.5 billion, according to data platform Metric.

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