By Ali Imran
ISLAMABAD: Member (IT), Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom Syed Junaid Imam has said that the government was focusing on e-commerce to move forward towards digital Pakistan and promote knowledge economy. He was addressing as Chief Guest at an e-commerce summit organized by the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) in collaboration with Daraz Pakistan. Senator Mian Muhammad Ateeq Sheikh, Osman Nasir Managing Director Pakistan Software Export Board, Ehsan Saya Managing Director DARAZ and many other dignitaries were present at the occasion.
Over 400 participants including traders and university students attended the e-commerce summit. Daraz team registered a large number of sellers on its digital platform to enable them to start online sale of products. This was the first ever e-commerce summit organized by ICCI in collaboration with Daraz with the intention of moving the economy towards digitization in line with PM’s vision of Digital Pakistan.
Syed Junaid Imam said that the government has formed a Digital Pakistan Policy to facilitate the growth of e-commerce as this market has enormous potential in Pakistan due to exponential growth in broadband subscribers to over 95 million. He said that the government was working to facilitate e-commerce by providing an enabling environment where Payment Service Providers (PSP) and Payment Service Operators (PSO) can operate and establish an effective e-commerce platform and take e-commerce activities to the higher levels.
He assured that MoITT would work with chambers of commerce & industry to prepare recommendations for tax reforms for e-commerce so that IT could flourish in the country. He appreciated the initiative of ICCI for organizing an e-commerce summit in collaboration with Daraz that would bring more traders on e-commerce platforms for business growth.
President ICCI Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan welcomed the participants to the e-commerce summit and said that the purpose of organizing this event was to inform the sellers/retailers/potential individuals including students and all the upcoming entrepreneurs about the immense potential of promoting sales through e-commerce platforms. He said that Amazon’s net sales in 2020 was over USD 386 billion, Alibaba Groups around USD 72 billion and eBay’s over USD 10 billion, which showed that this business model has a great future.
