Vietnam’s e-commerce turnover set to hit US$10 billion by 2020

Revenue from online retail was expected to make up 5% of total nationwide revenue from sales of goods and services in 2020, it said.

Last year, the country’s e-commerce sales saw a significant growth of 37% to reach over US$4 billion or equivalent to nearly 3% of total national retail. Of the sum, Hanoi and HCM City accounted for 75% while the remainder came from smaller cities.

Statistics from agency revealed that, around 50 million people used the internet and three-fourths of them shopped online. Meanwhile, an estimated an estimated 32 million people, or 36% of the Vietnamese population, used social media frequently.

Up to 30% of customers referred social media before shopping while 28% of businesses advertised and sold their goods and services on them, according to the data.

espite these such encouraging figures, Vietnamese’s e-commerce turnover was comparatively small in Asia, with China hitting US$617 billion in China, US$39 billion in South Korea and US$14 billion in India, Lai Viet Anh deputy head of the agency said at recent conference in Hanoi.

She petitioned that State to create infrastructure and legal framework for e-commerce development as move to reach the US$10 billion target that she called it was not a hard task.

Nguyen Thanh Hung, chairman of the Vietnam E-commerce Association, also agreed that the Government would play a very important role in e-commerce.

In order to achieve the target of US$10 billion, infrastructure, market size, the use of e-commerce by the business community and government offices needed to be all accelerated sharply, he said.

Master development plan

The Prime Minister has given the green light to a master plan to develop e-commerce over the period 2016-2020, which would strive to build a network providing e-commerce services in all cities and provinces nationwide in the next four years.
Accordingly, legal infrastructure for e-commerce would be completed by 2020, aiming to catch up with the development of different e-commerce models and activities in society. 
National e-commerce payment methods would be branched out to fit with various e-payment models, especially the business-to-customer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B).

Safety and security infrastructure for the sector would be developed with the establishment of management and monitoring systems, rating of e-commerce websites and mechanisms to address disputes and violations in e-commerce transactions.

The master plan also encouraged the development of e-commerce across borders with B2B e-commerce sales expected to make up 30% of the total import-export revenue in the next four years.

By 2020, 50% of the businesses would have an internet presence to update their business information and popularize their products.

Meanwhile, 80% of the firms would order or receive orders through e-commerce applications on the internet or on mobile platforms.

In order to increase non-cash transactions, all supermarkets, shopping malls and convenience stores would be required to accept payments via credit and debit cards.

Furthermore, around 70% of utility service providers, including telecommunications companies and electricity and water suppliers, would have to move their billings online by 2020./.