Foreign e-commerce exchanges must have rep.offices in Vietnam

VOV.VN - Along with having to register for service provision activities in Vietnam, e-commerce exchanges must establish representative offices or appoint their authorised representatives in the country.

Foreign e-commerce exchanges operating in the nation must register with the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT). This is a new regulation in line with Government Decree No. 85 dated September 25, 2021, on amendments and supplements to a number of articles of the Government's Decree No. 52 dated May 16, 2013 on e-commerce, known as Decree No. 85.

According to the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy under the MoIT, Decree No. 85 supplements regulations for foreign traders and organisations that have e-commerce activities in the country.

Accordingly, foreign traders and organisations that have websites providing e-commerce services in the nation must comply with one of the following forms of operation: having a Vietnamese domain name or display language in Vietnamese; or having more than 100,000 transactions from Vietnam within one year.

In order to be able to provide e-commerce services in the country, foreign traders and organisations must carry out registration procedures with the MoIT within 12 months from the effective date of Decree 85.

Apart from having to register to provide e-commerce services in the nation, these foreign traders and organisations must establish representative offices locally in accordance with the law or appoint their authorised representatives in the country.

Simultaneously, they are required to have the responsibility to co-ordinate with state management agencies in preventing transactions of goods and services that violate the law, fulfill the obligation to protect the interests of consumers, and ensure the quality of products and goods according to provisions of Vietnamese law.

Furthermore they have to perform the obligation to report to the MoIT statistics on the operational performance of the previous year.

This comes following the issuance of Government Decree No. 52, Vietnam's e-commerce has witnessed numerous drastic changes.

E-commerce has become a popular business form of local enterprises and has a strong pervasive effect in the Vietnamese consumer community.

According to statistics provided by the MoIT, the retail e-commerce market increased from US$2.2 billion in 2013 to US$13.7 billion in 2021, accounting for 6.5% of the total retail sales and consumer services of the whole country.

"Southeast Asian Internet Economy in 2021" report by Google and Temasek outlines that the Vietnamese Internet economy revenue in 2021 reached US$21 billion, an increase of 25% compared to last year and is expected to hit US$57 billion by 2025.

Featuring a large population potential, increasingly synchronous and developed infrastructure, the nation is viewed as a potential land for foreign traders and organizations to provide e-commerce services.

The latest regulation on foreign traders and organisations involving in e-commerce activities in Vietnam in Decree No. 85 is a more complete step of the legal system, serving to create an equal competitive business environment between domestic and foreign service providers,  a representative of the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy affirmed.

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