The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said it is now laying the groundwork for the formulation of a ?2020 E-Commerce Roadmap? that will serve as the industry?s blueprint for growth.
?The coming years will be bullish for Philippine e-commerce and come 2020, our strategies and plans for the industry will exhibit a 20/20 vision? utterly perfect and accurate,? DTI undersecretary Prudencio Reyes Jr. declared in a recently concluded e-commerce forum.
The growing Philippine e-commerce sector was said to have racked up revenues of $1 billion or P50 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow to $2 billion by 2015.
Meanwhile, the country?s Internet market in 2014 accounted P1.4 trillion or 8 to 13 percent of the country?s GDP (gross domestic product).
To formulate the roadmap, DTI is set to conduct a series of Technical Working Group (TWG) meetings this year to gather stakeholders and involve them in the process.
?It is important to involve everyone [stakeholders] in the process of coming up with the roadmap. Their active involvement is needed to arrive at an accurate and perfect vision of where the industry is and where it ought to go,? Reyes said.
Reyes also mentioned that the exchange of ideas between and among stakeholders through the TWG meetings is important as it is where the industry can identify its true and correct direction.
The TWG is divided into different pillars: (a) information security; (b) data privacy; (c) e-payment; (d) consumer protection; and (e) logistics. These pillars are all aimed at developing the local e-commerce sector, bringing government transactions to the future, decreasing corruption by integrating technology, and facilitating ease of doing business.
The DTI initiated the E-Commerce Forum in December 2014 to set the stage toward the formulation of the first Philippine E-Commerce Roadmap. It attracted more than 100 participants from the private and public sectors. — PIA
