Hanoi (VNA) —﷽ While e-commerce is vital to Vietnam's development, 80 percentof the country’s population has not accessed online trading yet, leavinghuge room for growth, according to experts.

Ata forum on market strategies for Vietnamese businesses held by the Institutefor Brand and Competitiveness Strategy (BCSI) in Hanoi on November 5, Hoang QuocQuyen, representative of Tiki in the north, said that 85 percent of thee-commerce serves the urban market mostly in Hanoi and HCM City, whichaccounts for 20 percent of the population, while the rest or the 80 millionpeople in rural araes are not yet included in the system. NguyenThi Minh Huyen, deputy director of the Department of E-Commerce and DigitalEconomy, Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), said Vietnam has greatpotential for digital economic development. E-commerceis an important component of the digital economy with the growth rate of morethan 25 percent per year and will keep growing in the next five years, theofficial added, highlighting there is an opportunity for digital economicdevelopment, especially in the context of COVID-19. Vietnamis aiming to have the digital economy account for 20 percentof total GDP by 2025 and be one of the 50 leading countries in theinformation industry. Alsoat the forum, Vu Xuan Truong from BCSI said that previously, small businessesdid not pay attention to their brands, but the situation has changed in thelast 3-5 years, thinking a brand as a weapon to compete in the market. Inthis case, building a brand with a visual image is an effective way to enter theminds of customers who are spending a lot of time on social networks, he said. Thereis a huge market for local businesses to grow bigger serving 80 million peoplein rural areas with their products. By bringing good products to the low-incomepeople in rural places, local enterprises could approach a huge market withless competition, Quyen from Tiki told the forum. Asa leader of the Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy, Huyen shared therecent goals of the Government to spread e-commerce development in businessesand communities, easing the gap of such development between big cities andlocalities, building healthy, competitive and sustainable consumption marketsfor Vietnamese goods at home and abroad through e-commerce and making Vietnam amongthe top three most developed e-commerce markets in Southeast Asia./.