Ho ChiMinh City (VNA) - Online shopping traffic in Vietnam so far this year rocketed over 150 percent against ayear earlier, with daily visits to e-commerce sites growing to 3.5 million,said Nguyen Ngoc Dung, Deputy Chairman of the Vietnam e-Commerce Association (VECOM), during a workshop on November 10.

E-commercesites are booming, creating an engine for enterprises to thrive while stimulatingconsumer demand and boosting transaction numbers, Dung told the workshop oncommercial transactions on e-commerce sites and key legal issues, held in HCM Cityby the Vietnam International Arbitration Centre (VIAC) in partnership with theInvestment and Trade Promotion Centre of HCM City (ITPC) and VECOM.

Vietnam’se-Commerce White Book 2020 revealed that the country’s e-commerce retail salessurged 25 percent to 10.08 billion USD last year, making it the third-fastestgrowing e-commerce market in Southeast Asia.

In 2019,e-commerce accounted for 4.9 percent of the total retail sales of goods andservices, and about 42 percent of the Vietnamese population purchased goodsonline, according to the report.

Thanks toe-commerce platforms, enterprises are more flexible in business operations andable to serve an increasing number of customers, ITPC Deputy Director NguyenTuan said. More importantly, they are one step closer to digital technologies.

Insteadof doing business in the conventional manner, Vietnamese companies are graduallyshifting towards e-commerce, he continued, focusing more on developing their websitesand running business systems via online tools, such as email or socialnetworks, to save time and improve efficiency.

Tuan described this as a good sign, especially at a time when many businesses arestruggling because of COVID-19.

To ensurethat e-commerce transactions are safe and secure and to guarantee the rights ofall stakeholders, it is important to develop a legal framework relevant toVietnam’s circumstances.

A survey hasrevealed that most of the e-commerce sites only require that vendors provide basicinformation, which has resulted in some failing to meet their obligations.Violations are now more common, and many sites have yet to adopt an effectivemechanism to monitor vendors’ adherence to regulations.

Within the framework of theworkshop, agreements were signed between VECOM and ITPC and VECOM and VIAC, topave the way for joint efforts on improving the competitiveness of Vietnameseenterprises and helping them reduce their legal risks when doing business one-commerce platforms./.