Pakistan’s e-commerce market size increases to Rs96bn

Pakistan’s e-commerce marketing size has increased to Rs96 billion in the first quarter of the financial year 2021 as compared to Rs71 billion in the first quarter of the financial year 2020.

This was informed during the fourth meeting of the National e-Commerce Council (NeCC), chaired by Abdul Razak Dawood, advisor to Prime Minister (PM) on commerce.

NeCC is a body of representatives from the public and private sector, established under the National e-Commerce Policy approved by the cabinet in October 2019.

According to officials, the NeCC discussed operationalisation of cross border e-commerce procedures, incentives to promote e-commerce, ways to introduce international payment services.

Furthermore, deliberations on the mercantile stock exchange, digital on-boarding services, reports of the consultative committee on Women Economic Empowerment (WEE), e-commerce business facilitation portal, consumer protection councils, availability of broadband to remote areas, Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) a digital transformation process, and collaboration with Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) on e-commerce related matters were also discussed.

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) informed the meeting on the legal framework updates, including e-commerce rules regarding the mechanism of imports goods clearance, and return of goods policy.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) also gave a detailed presentation on efforts to promote cross-border e-commerce.

The National Institutional Facilitation Technologies (NIFT) informed the meeting that they are developing a payment solution for cross border/international payments in collaboration with the SBP through which people outside of Pakistan will be able to pay through Paypal, Google Pay and Apple Pay. Payments within Pakistan will be processed through the help.

NIFT said that the payment system was to become functional by the end of 2020 but the diversion of efforts towards COVID affected the plan badly.

Meanwhile, the sub-committee on financial inclusion and digitization shared its progress of conducting three webinars for freelancers, mobile wallets, account-based solutions and card-based payments.