Promoting e-commerce

At long last, the government has set up a high-powered committee with the commerce minister as its chief to promote growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) in the country. The committee, which includes all stakeholders, will curb malpractices and deal with issues that slow down or block its buoyant growth in the country. Besides, it will focus on bringing all the activities on e-commerce under a disciplined and organised system.

The e-commerce market is still largely Dhaka-centric and it caters to a small segment of the population. There's clearly an inherent barrier to greater adoption of e-commerce because of the need for computing device and internet access for the purpose. Given the rapid growth of internet-enabled mobile phones, the situation is likely to change fast. The e-commerce market has been growing very rapidly over the last couple of years, especially since it began with a low baseline. However, the most critical hurdle to growth remains trust in online payment mechanisms. And it needs time to develop.

The Bangladesh Bank governor had once estimated the size of e-commerce market in the country at Tk 2.0 billion. Much of this e-commerce activities are not, however, necessarily what constitutes true e-commerce transactions. Typically, an e-commerce transaction requires the actual transaction where funds are transferred from a buyer to a seller electronically. Most of the transactions that are categorised as e-commerce in Bangladesh involve cash-on-delivery, which cannot be considered an electronic transaction, even if other parts in the value chain such as product listing or marketing are done electronically. The information and communication technology (ICT) division has guidelines on e-commerce. But there are no unified or combined guidelines on e-commerce, which prevents the sector from flourishing. The committee is expected to attach importance to data security, protection against frauds, delivery channels and digital marketing under the planned guideline. The government should study the policies of other countries that are already successful.

More than 1,000 e-commerce operators are currently in business in addition to many other platforms that mainly operate their trade via Facebook. The market is growing fast and proper regulation is needed to propel further growth. The market is growing at around 20 per cent a year. With no specific policy in place, entrepreneurs in the sector face different challenges. The committee now formed will hopefully come up with effective guidelines for healthy growth of e-commerce in the country.

India started e-commerce ten years ago, and its transactions will hit the $100-billion mark within two years. Bangladesh has just started the online trading process. The country has more than 20 million middle-income and affluent consumers who are ready to take the benefits of e-commerce. There will be at least 50 million such customers in five years, experts say. It is expected that the committee will devise ways and means to expand e-commerce market so that the country can meet demands from abroad as well. Expatriates could be targeted and there are about ten million Bangladeshi expatriates in different countries. Bangladesh is in the process of establishing digital economy and e-commerce will play an important role in achieving that goal.