Ben Tre (VNA) -E-commerce allows small- and medium-sized enterprises to close the gap betweenthem and large enterprises thanks to the equal and flexible competitiveness ofthe digital business environment, said a local official of Ben Tre province.

Vice Chairman of the provincial People'sCommittee Nguyen Huu Lap was speaking at the seminar titled ‘E-commerce – A breakthroughsolution for businesses’, held in the southern province of Ben Tre on August 20.

The event, attended by provincialauthorities and more than 300 enterprises in the Mekong Delta region, aimed toshare and update information on the trend of e-commerce development in thecountry. It created favourable conditions for enterprises of all economicsectors to approach e-commerce solution providers, gradually exploit thebenefits of e-commerce, boosting brand promotion and increasing businessefficiency.

Thanks to e-commerce, consumerscan access an unlimited source of diversified brands and products, Lap told theseminar, which was co-organised by Ben Tre province’s Department of Industryand Trade, the Vietnam E-Commerce Association and the Department of E-Commerceand Digital Economy under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

However, at present, manybusinesses had not grasped and fully exploited the advantages of e-commerce butstill focused on traditional sales channels, Lap said.

At the seminar, experts said thatthe development of science and technology and drastic changes in productionmethods, management, services and trade brought by the Fourth IndustrialRevolution required businesses to innovate thinking, build online businessmodels with abundant supply systems to enter the market, meeting therequirements of distributors and importers.

Nguyen Ngoc Dung, Vice Chairmanof the Vietnam E-Commerce Association (VECOM) said that in 2018, Vietnamwitnessed strong growth of e-commerce with an average rate of over 30 percent. E-commercesales posted over 4 billion USD in 2015 and reached 7.8 billion USD in 2018.They are expected to hit 13 billion USD by 2020.

According to Deputy Director ofthe Department of Industry and Trade of Ben Tre province Nguyen Van Niem,provincial leaders pay special attention and create favourable conditionsfor enterprises to develop e-commerce. Currently, the number of businessesapplying e-commerce to business activities and trade is increasing.

Notably, since April, theproinvincial Department of Industry and Trade has cooperated with the VietnamE-Commerce Association and Lazada Group to implement the program "OnlineDay of Ben Tre Coconut Village". So far, 16 enterprises, cooperatives andcoconut villages in Ben Tre are participating in the programme, selling 1,877 coconutproducts of different kinds.

Niem said that at present, the departmentwas planning to build an e-commerce platform to sell specialties of theprovince to help local businesses promote and sell goods.

In the future, it will continueto support local businesses in developing e-commerce such as organisingtraining courses, coordinating with Lazada to promote local products, encouragebusinesses to participate in sales on lazada.vn, building free websites forbusinesses, develop an online brand set for key products of Ben Tre province, headded.-VNA