Vietnam’s trade ministry and e-commerce giant Amazon have signed an e-commerce pact that will see Vietnamese merchants join the Amazon Global Selling network.
“Vietnam has more than 700,000 businesses, 98 per cent of which are SMEs. Therefore, in addition to traditional trade promotion initiatives, developing e-commerce is critical,” Vu Ba Phu, head of the ministry’s trade promotion agency, said in a statement.
According to a report by Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc on DealStreetAsia, under the new partnership, Vietnamese businesses will be entitled to access Amazon’s 300 million customers as well as wholesale buyers across the US, Japan and Europe.
Bernard Tay, head of Amazon Global Selling Asia Pacific, said the US e-commerce major was interested in the Vietnam market due to its manufacturing capacity as well as the thriving startup ecosystem.
The partnership has marked Amazon’s maiden e-commerce operation in Vietnam. Last year, DEALSTREETASIA reported that Amazon might look at opening a Vietnam-based warehouse, as BW Industrial, the logistics joint venture between global investment firm Warburg Pincus and Vietnamese construction company Becamex, had proposed to build a warehouse for Amazon in the future.