E-commerce development is improving, but state management in this field is facing many difficulties because the legal framework cannot cover all e-commerce activities.
The HCM City Industry and Trade Department and HCM City Economics University have reviewed the implementation of the project on developing e-commerce in HCMC by 2025.
The project’s researchers found that the e-commerce growth rate in Vietnam is 25 percent and the number of businesses in the field has increasef rapidly. The year 2018 witnessed z boom of e-commerce with impressive figures.
The total revenue of e-commerce firms in Vietnam in 2018 was $2.26 billion, an increase of 30 percent compared with 2018 and double that of 2015, with which Vietnam was added into the top six largest e-commerce markets in the world, just after China, the US, UK, Japan and Germany.
In HCMC, there are 130,000 e-commerce websites, of which 9,000 websites have registered with the Ministry of Industry and Trade (8,519 sale websites and 391 websites providing e-commerce services).
HCMC continues to be one of the largest e-commerce markets in Vietnam. Online sales in the city account for 8.14 percent of total retail turnover and 40 percent of total e-commerce transaction value.
The researchers pointed out that state management in e-commerce now has to ‘run after’ e-commerce firms. According to Pham Thanh Kien, director of the HCMC Industry and Trade Department, e-commerce has been developing very rapidly, while the state management in the field is still fledgling.
According to the research team, HCMC has every condition to develop e-commerce. The city has the basic infrastructure for development of e-commerce. And the business growth of HCMC has prompted many businesses to invest in e-commerce.
Currently, the scale of e-commerce application in HCMC accounts for 60 percent of the whole country. As for sales solutions, businesses are shifting into multi-channel distribution and have begun integrating big data.
COD (cash on delivery) remains the major payment method in e-commerce, but fintech environment is changing e-commerce.
In addition, the economic development in HCMC, the building of smart city and the deployment of 5G infrastructure, will also contribute to the successful development of e-commerce.
Vu Quoc Tuan from Lazada commented that e-commerce development is soaring in mobile commerce as young people can quickly access m-commerce and have diverse purchasing demands.
In HCMC’s trade development strategy, the city will combine the development of both traditional trade and e-commerce. A question may be raised that if there will be a contradiction between e-commerce and traditional trade. The answer is ‘yes and no’. ‘Yes’ if the benefits of involved parties cannot be harmonized and ‘no’ if the coordination and operation are good.
Source: Vietnamnet