Agency builds national e-commerce platform

Rice put up for sale on An Giang province's local platform "San pham An Giang" (sanphamangiang.com). (Photo: VNA)

An e-commerce platform that would act as a national hub connecting all local platforms nationwide is being built.

The Vietnam E-Commerce and Digital Economy Agency (VEDA) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) is building the platform, named San Viet (Vietnam floor) to help narrow the e-commerce development gap between provinces and act as a national marketplace for local products, especially OCOPs (products in the One Commune One Product Programme).

San Viet will improve the competitive advantages of local products and help shape a sound e-commerce sector in the country, said the representative.

He also said the platform would be outfitted with marketing tools that allow merchants to boost their online sales more easily.

Chairman of the Vietnam E-Commerce Association (VECOM) Nguyen Ngoc Dung believed that the platform could not transform the e-commerce landscape overnight, given that e-commerce remains a closed book to many OCOP producers in certain provinces.

They do not even know how to sell their products online, let alone make use of delivery and payment systems, said Dung.

He said a large-sized e-commerce platform in Vietnam, on average, processes 800,000 transactions daily. The figure is just a drop in the bucket for the country's vast population of 100 million.

He said VECOM would cooperate with local authorities in promoting the growth of e-commerce in the short term. He called on VEDA to dispatch specialists to provinces with slow-growing e-commerce to bring them up to speed.

In fact, the situation is not all doom and gloom. There are plenty of provinces that have managed to put e-commerce to good use, such as Bac Giang province. Its local platform, named San 24h, has become a vibrant marketplace for its local specialties with dozens of millions of transactions having been processed to date.

Chairman of the Bac Giang provincial People’s Committe Le Anh Duong underlined the need for technical support to raise awareness of e-commerce among local farmers. He said the province had aimed to bring all its OCOPs of three stars and above to the national platform in the short term.

Can Tho is another city ahead of the curve with its up-and-running local platform “Cho nong sa Can Tho” (Can Tho agricultural product market).

Deputy Director of Can Tho's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Tran Thai Nghiem said the national platform would be a big push to “Cho nong san Can Tho”, expanding its customer base considerably.

He also said the department was working on a scheme to apply 3D virtual exhibitions to all its local agricultural products on the platform.

Le Thanh Dung, Director of TSIM Company, said reasonable prices and good services hold the key to the success of an e-commerce platform. Large-sized platforms such as Tiki, Shopee, and Lazada are well aware of that and have launched countless discount programmes to draw in customers./