E-commerce has huge potential in rural areas: experts

A farmers check coconuts before selling to traders in a village in Ben Tre province (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi - While e-commerce is vital to Vietnam's development, 80 percent of the country’s population has not accessed online trading yet, leaving huge room for growth, according to experts.

At a forum on market strategies for Vietnamese businesses held by the Institute for Brand and Competitiveness Strategy (BCSI) in Hanoi on November 5, Hoang Quoc Quyen, representative of Tiki in the north, said that 85 percent of the e-commerce serves the urban market mostly in Hanoi and HCM City, which accounts for 20 percent of the population, while the rest or the 80 million people in rural araes are not yet included in the system.

Nguyen Thi Minh Huyen, deputy director of the Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy, Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), said Vietnam has great potential for digital economic development.

E-commerce is an important component of the digital economy with the growth rate of more than 25 percent per year and will keep growing in the next five years, the official added, highlighting there is an opportunity for digital economic development, especially in the context of COVID-19.

Vietnam is aiming to have the digital economy account for 20 percent of total GDP by 2025 and be one of the 50 leading countries in the information industry.

Also at the forum, Vu Xuan Truong from BCSI said that previously, small businesses did not pay attention to their brands, but the situation has changed in the last 3-5 years, thinking a brand as a weapon to compete in the market.

In this case, building a brand with a visual image is an effective way to enter the minds of customers who are spending a lot of time on social networks, he said.

There is a huge market for local businesses to grow bigger serving 80 million people in rural areas with their products. By bringing good products to the low-income people in rural places, local enterprises could approach a huge market with less competition, Quyen from Tiki told the forum.

As a leader of the Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy, Huyen shared the recent goals of the Government to spread e-commerce development in businesses and communities, easing the gap of such development between big cities and localities, building healthy, competitive and sustainable consumption markets for Vietnamese goods at home and abroad through e-commerce and making Vietnam among the top three most developed e-commerce markets in Southeast Asia.