The government is eyeing to attract some half a million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to do business online by 2022 as part of the new road map on e-commerce aimed at digitalizing trade in the Philippines for the next three years.
Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez on Tuesday said the tentative target for the new road map on e-commerce is to get 500,000 MSMEs ready to transact with consumers online. Should it be approved, this is a 400-percent increase from the existing target of 100,000 MSMEs doing e-commerce.
“There is greater momentum because of the available technologies, and the confidence of our people in using these technologies is high. The infrastructure for a healthy e-commerce industry is really around us. It is just a matter of converting that usage into activities,” Lopez said in a news briefing.
With this, Lopez is mulling over to hike the contribution of e-commerce to the economy to 50 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. At present, the objective is to make e-commerce contribute 25 percent to GDP by next year, from 10 percent in 2015 based on data from i-Metrics Asia-Pacific Corp.