Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnam’s e-commerce market isforecast to climb 20 percent in the last quarter of this year to reach 12billion USD by year end if the COVID-19 pandemic is brought under control.

This is the forecast by the Ministry of Industry and Trade(MoIT) in a recent report on Vietnam’s e-commerce market against the backdropof the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early stages of the pandemic (from February to April),57 percent of surveyed e-commerce-related businesses reported their revenuegrowth was below 30 percent compared to the same period of 2019 with some evenseeing negative growth, the report said.

However, 24 percent of businesses saw revenue increasing morethan 51 percent.

E-commerce revenue in the first six months declined 6 percentyear-on-year despite the number of transactions increasing by 25 percent. Mosttransactions at that time were of low value.

Under circumstances when the disease is kept at bay, theministry forecasts e-commerce revenue to rise 20 percent in the last threemonths to reach 12 billion USD.

If the pandemic worsens, impacting production andconsumption, supply and operations of transport and catering services, growthcould reach only 13 percent with estimated market value of 11 billion USD.

Vietnam is one of the most dynamic e-commerce markets in theworld with an average growth rate of more than 30 percent per year in the lastfive years.

In May, the Government approved the national e-commercedevelopment master plan for 2021-2025, targeting annual industry growth of 25percent with more than half of the population shopping online and averagespending of about 600 USD per person per year by 2025.

The market size is expected to reach 35 billion USD by 2025,ranking third in Southeast Asia.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) sales will rise 25 percent peryear, accounting for 10 percent of total retail sales of goods and services.Cashless payments in e-commerce would make up 50 percent and about 70 percentof transactions on e-commerce platforms would have electronic invoices.

At the same time, the gap in e-commerce development between Hanoiand HCM City and other localities is also expected to narrow.

To achieve this goal, the MoIT is building mechanisms andpolicies to promote digital transformation and enhance the capacity to manageand organise e-commerce activities and boost consumer confidence.

In the first nine months of this year, the authority handledmore than 2,200 cases of e-commerce violations and other acts of takingadvantage of e-commerce to trade in smuggled goods, goods of unknown origin,goods infringing intellectual property rights and counterfeit goods with finesworth more than 16 billion VND (690,000 USD).

A number of cases attracted attention including fake productssold by Ansan Cosmetics chains and through the Kagawa.vn platform, as well asfood safety scandal of Minhchay.com.

In addition, since the beginning of the year, the ministryhas asked e-commerce platforms to review and remove nearly 223,600 shops andmore than one million products, handling more than 30,000 violating shops withnearly 48,000 products./.