Hanoi (VNA) - The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) will collaborate with Alibaba to increase the number of prominent businesses selected to join the Vietnam E-Pavilion to 300, providing opportunities for enterprises to access millions of consumers worldwide through Alibaba.com's extensive customer network.

According to Director General of the MoIT’s Vietnam Trade Promotion Agency (Vietrade) Vu Ba Phu, this will create conditions for Vietnam to enter the era of digital commerce and business, laying a foundation for sustainable economic development.

Statistics from the MoIT’s Export and Import Department show that 32% of the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have established business relationships with foreign partners through online platforms. This enables them to diversify sale channels and directly access global buyers without spatial or temporal constraints, thus reducing costs for building supply chains and establishing representative offices in target markets.

Insiders said cross-border e-commerce is an inevitable trend serving as a tool to diversify channels and methods to swiftly seek buyers, partners, and orders.

Businesses have been advised to exert even more efforts to narrow the gap in exporting Vietnamese goods to the world through digital platforms.

The revenue of business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce reached nearly 500 trillion VND (over 19.6 billion USD) in 2023, and the figure was predicted to hit 650 trillion VND this year.

Doan Quoc Tam from the Vietnam E-commerce Association said it has supported and accompanied departments, sectors, and localities in organising online exhibitions, thus facilitating connections and providing opportunities for SMEs to access domestic and foreign distributors and conduct market survey through online channels.

According to the programme for supporting enterprises in e-commerce business development on the Amazon Global Selling platform, the export value of Vietnamese businesses selling on Amazon has increased by 50%, and the number of Vietnamese partners selling on Amazon has surged by 40%.

Nguyen Thi Minh Huyen, Deputy Director of the MoIT’s Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy, said her agency has been operating an origin tracing system, a Flagship Store model - local storefronts on e-commerce platforms, and a programme to support businesses in exporting their goods through cross-border e-commerce.

These efforts aim to assist Vietnamese enterprises in accessing and successfully exporting domestic products through 🧸major global e-commerce platforms, she added./.