There are no official statistics, but besides major trading floors in Vietnam, such as Lazada and Sendo, most supermarkets, trade centers, and even manufacturers open websites to sell goods.
In particular, in the context that people have to implement social distancing under Directive No.16, the volume of goods traded at supermarkets and commercial centers has increased drastically. The demand for online shopping during the pandemic has been too high that many supermarkets and large trade centers could not timely fulfill orders for people. Therefore, many spontaneous sales pages have been active trading channels during this time.
However, consumers have been warned about the quality of goods on these spontaneous sales pages. It is no coincidence that on some sales groups, which attract hundreds of thousands of people, there are constantly reports to denounce Facebook account holders for selling low-quality products or receiving money transfers and then disappeared.
Recently, at a talk show within the framework of the Vietnam Agriculture Digital Transformation Forum 2021 and the Virtual Reality Agriculture Exhibition, leaders of many local agricultural sectors said that difficult transportation and supply of goods had been negatively affecting manufacturers, especially farmers because agricultural products must be harvested in time. Overmatured agricultural products not only cost farmers more money for raising and growing but also make the quality worse.
At present, in many localities, agricultural, aquatic, and seafood products are in the harvest season, and farmers are longing to sell their produce. In this context, one of the solutions that can help remove obstacles in goods circulation, allowing buyers and sellers to learn to buy or sell better, is the Ministry of Industry and Trade to build an e-commerce trading floor for Vietnamese agricultural products.
Mr. Chu Tien Dung, Deputy Director of the Global Logistics Management Institute, suggested that the e-commerce platform must meet all three factors of purchase, transportation, and payment. The State manages this trading floor while creating a full, transparent legal corridor for enterprises and households to conduct transactions through the floor.
Currently, many ministries and sectors have been developing the e-commerce trading floors, taking into account the global connection factor. However, they seem to have not paid much attention to e-commerce transactions for the domestic market. This should be adjusted because, with more than 100 million people, this is an attractive large-scale market for enterprises. In addition, for enterprises and farmers to be able to connect to buy or sell their agricultural products on the e-commerce platform, the authorities need to do better at market orientation, thereby clearly defining production and farming standards. Only then, agricultural products are eligible to participate in the online market. For instance, as for lychee, right from the stage of cultivation, farmers have been guided to standardize the VietGAP or GlobalGAP standards, so they are able to not only sell their produce at high prices in the domestic market but also export well.
According to many experts, only by developing well in both domestic and foreign markets, production and business activities of Vietnam's agricultural, aquatic, and seafood industries can develop sustainably.
