One important mission of these development strategies is to perfect the platform ‘National Digital Address System – NDAS’ to serve e-commerce and digital economy purposes, followed by the creation of a national postal portal for an open data ecosystem later.
MIC is going to cooperate with related ministries and state units, especially the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and the local authorities to guide agricultural production households, individual business households, cooperatives, cooperative groups, and retailers on basic knowledge in production and trading direction.
Another mission is to develop trading floors for Vietnamese postal businesses so that farms and citizens can freely trade produce on a digital environment, with proper management, warehouse operation, and shipping platforms. As all households in Vietnam will obtain their own digital address in 2022, it is hoped that all agricultural production families can participate in transactions on trading floors owned by Vietnamese postal enterprises, selling their items with clear origins and brand names.
To fulfill this goal, in the beginning of 2022, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) introduced a support plan to foster digital agricultural economy. In particular, there will be 10 million accounts working on popular trading floors of Postmart.vn (operated by do VNPost) and Voso.vn (operated by ViettelPost). Also, it is planned to bring all 3-star One Commune One Product (OCOP) items of provinces and municipalities onto these floors. All agricultural production households will be trained as to digital skills and trading skills on digital floors.
By the end of this February, over 5.2 million households had accounts on Postmart.vn and Voso.vn. Among them, more than 1.1 million accounts have introduced 70,755 products onto the trading floors. This means a minimalization of the case ‘high yield low value’ or price squeezing. More importantly, farmers now have a chance to access a modern trading channel to gradually adapt to the digital economy of the country.
The postal industry, according to experts, has several opportunities to achieve breakthroughs when becoming the infrastructure for the digital economy, as there is now a boom in e-commerce and sharing economy models, leading to higher demands on shipping services. With the advantage of having over 21,600 postal offices throughout the country, it is absolutely convenient for the post to play this shipping role.
When smart devices are increasingly popular, the postal infrastructure needs to be a link for e-commerce activities, especially in rural areas, to promote agricultural digital economy. Doing this, the postal industry becomes one vital factor in socio-economic development of Vietnam and the essential infrastructure for the digital economy in the future.
