Retailers pushed to bring businesses online

RETAILERS were urged to start bringing their business online.

According to lawyer Paul Santos, national vice president of the Philippine Retailers Association, electronic commerce in the Philippines is expected to grow further in the coming years.

Santos, also the president of Picture City, spoke at the 7th Cebu Regional Retail Conference yesterday.

“Right now there are 35 million Filipinos in the Internet and that grows at an average of 44 percent every year. There’s a huge potential there,” said Santos.

At present, the country’s e-commerce is valued at P3 billion which Santos said is still small.

“Less than 3 percent of the online Filipinos have tried e-commerce which is still really small but we expect this to grow in the coming years,” said Santos.

Most of the transactions are purchases of gadgets, apparels and many other products that people see online. They check stores in the area and just purchase online once they are certain thay they liked the product.

The growth in smart phones and tablet devices complement e-commerce as people do online purchases through these devices according to Santos.

“Retailing is possibly the most challenging industry that is projected to grow to as much as P1.61 trillion in 2016 from only P1.43 trillion in 2011,” said Santos.

He added that 30 percent of retailers in the country are the modern retailers like malls while the huge chunk, 70 percent, are still into traditional retailing like the sari-sari stores.

“So there’s plenty of room for growth in the modern retailing like online shops especially that by 2015, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is going to happen. Thus, we expect more variety of goods by then,” Santos said.