The Eurasian Economic Commission jointly with the
Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), the Russian Export
Center (REC, JSC) and the Business Council of the Eurasian Economic Union held
a webinar "Electronic trading platforms. Transfer of supplies in online
mode".
"Developing e-trading and using marketplaces as the topic of the first
webinar this year was chosen quite deliberately," Igor Nazaruk, Director of the EEC Trade Policy
Department, stressed opening the event.
"Representatives of the business community have repeatedly
expressed their wishes for such a discussion at the recent meetings of the Business
Dialogue chaired by Andrey Slepnev, Member of the Board – EEC Minister in
charge of Trade. The pandemic situation that is now taking place has stimulated
us to be more active in this direction.
Representatives of the marketplaces AliExpress Russia and
Deal.by, Wildberries LLC, Ozon as well as representatives of the Digital
Kazakhstan Association, E-Commerce Association of the Kyrgyz Republic,
RTS-Tender LLC, SELDON PRO LLC, B2B-Center ETP and others appeared for the
webinar’s speakers. Several hundred listeners joined the online broadcast.
As the speakers informed, according to preliminary
estimates, the EAEU internet trading increased from 20 to 30% at last year end.
Along with that, according to current expectations, the single e-commerce
market across the globe exceeded 4 trn US dollars in 2020 and will approximate
to 5 trn US dollars in 2021.
At the same time, Ilya Kabanov, Head of the Section of
Market Monitoring and Marking of Commodities of the EEC Tariff and Non-tariff
Customs Regulation Department, has noted that at high growth rates of e-trading
in the Member States, each taken separately, the mutual trade between the
countries failed to show such performance. "The lack of information
about both the readiness of manufacturers and sellers to enter each other's
marketplaces and how this can be done is, probably, one of the key
inconsistencies," the expert suggested.
During the event, some other issues were addressed as
well as questions received from interested parties were collected. All explanations
will be given in the near future and then posted on the webinar page on the EEC
website at: http://eec.eaeunion.org/comission/direction/trade/webinar.php, where the
event video has been posted as well.
"Our colleagues have announced a number of things
which should be solved: these include both losses from currency conversion and
expenses from insufficient development of transport and electronic
infrastructure, and many other things," Igor Nazaruk summed up the discussion, expressing hope
for fruitful continuation of joint activities.