Islamabad : Syed Junaid Imam, Member (IT), Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom 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 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.

Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry 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. He said that e-commerce sales China was over 22 percent of its total sales and India’s 7-8 percent, but e-commerce sale in Pakistan was just 0.5 percent of its total sales, which showed that Pakistan still remained an untapped market for e-commerce and urged that traders should capitalize on this untapped market for achieving fast growth in business. He said that in coming days, ICCI will hold more events including an industrial expo, shopping festival, property expo and other initiatives that would further promote the interests of the business community.

Ehsan Saya Managing Director Daraz and his team gave a comprehensive presentation to the participants about the registration process on Daraz and how to promote sales using this digital platform. It was informed that Daraz has over 70000 successful sellers nationwide with 20 million products in over 100 categories, 2600 Daraz Dukaans, over 65 Daraz hubs and 5 state of the art warehouses. Daraz is operating in over 100 cities with a distribution network in over 600 cities. They said that Daraz was a digital platform that connected sellers with buyers for 24/7 business activity and it was operating in 5 countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Fatma Azim Senior Vice President and Abdul Rehman Khan Vice President ICCI thanked the Daraz team for visiting ICCI to register traders on its platform and giving them comprehensive information about starting online business through the Daraz platform.