BANKING on the global leverage of the Philippines on social media and internet usage, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) aimed to increase e-commerce enterprises from 500,000 to one million.
Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said the country is built for e-commerce and needs a whole-of-the-society approach to sustain it.
“According to the 2021 Digital report, the Philippines remains the top country in social media and internet usage worldwide. E-commerce adoption in the Philippines grew from 70 percent in 2019 to 76 percent in 2020 and 80.2 percent in 2021,” Lopez said during the Digital Pilipinas launch on Thursday, July 22, 2021.
Lopez said this was observed, especially last year with e-commerce coming to the rescue during the Covid-19 pandemic when the online businesses filled the void left by brick and mortar businesses affected by the community lockdowns.
The trade secretary cited online retail, delivery services, online entertainment, digital services, telehealth, work from home arrangements and digital payments as among the in demand digital activities in the country.
“All of these helped us in the past year and continue to do so until now. It is not surprising that we saw the number of online businesses increasing last year,” he said.
Based on the DTI Business Name Registration Next Generation System, the number of online businesses involved in retail trade jumped from 1,848 in the first three months of 2020 to 88,575 by the end of the same year.
The total number of online business names registered for retail trade is at 105,159.
Lopez said this is the primary reason they launched early this year, the updated E-commerce Philippines 2022 Roadmap, which the public and private sectors have collaborated in crafting together.
Through this roadmap, the DTI aims to increase the contribution of e-commerce to the Philippine’s gross domestic product.
The roadmap’s goals include the increase the number of e-commerce enterprises from 500,000 in 2020 to a million by 2022 and to develop a digitally skilled workforce to support the growing e-commerce sector and empower online consumers and build trust between merchants and buyers. (JOB)