Vietnam-Africa Business Gateway: Helps Enterprises Promote Trade

 

 

Firstly, the trading floor is an information channel about the Vietnamese markets and those of nine other African countries for enterprises before doing business in the markets. Via the Vinafrica floor, we provide our business support knowledge, including trademark registration, the introduction of banking systems and organisations which can help enterprises. More importantly, via the floor, we help enterprises register and build their pavilions and websites, offering orders and introducing products on the Internet. We also provide B2B (business-to-business) transactions, helping them sign contracts.

 

The biggest difficulty is information as we have to seek, collect and manage market information to update on the website. We have only adequate information about the Vietnamese market while not having much information about African markets. Part of information is supplied by embassies and trade missions of African countries in Vietnam.

Market information always plays an important role helping enterprises seek business opportunities. To overcome the difficulty, we wish that each African country would have an e-commerce promotion agency via online trading floors, so we can co-operate with the agencies to get adequate information about local markets.

 

So far, the number of member enterprises of the floor has reached 3,715, including 2,141 enterprises of Vietnam and 1,574 enterprises of African countries, China and Japan. We classify our member enterprises into two groups, VIP members and basic members. VIP members enjoy priorities of being allowed to join the floor and put as many images of their products as they want onto the portal. We now have 880 VIP members. Basic members are allowed to join transactions on the floor but they are constrained by not being allowed to put their products onto the portal. The number of basic members stands at 2,835. The number of orders, which have been put onto the portal, has reached 2,373 and the number of products put onto by enterprises is put at 3,778. This is an encouraging figure for an online trading floor and according to the website rating organisation of Alexa Vinafrica ranks 65,500^th among websites in the world.

 

Each enterprise, after registering its membership online with us, will become a basic member, if it qualifies for our information check and its account is accepted. To become a VIP member, a basic member has to send us its business registration certificate. For enterprises operating in Vietnam, they have to send their business registration certificates only to prove their eligibility. For enterprises operating in foreign countries, apart from sending business registration certificates, they have to send us certifications of some organisations, which represent the enterprises. These organisations may include VCCI, chambers of commerce and industry of countries, embassies, trade missions of the countries in Vietnam or governmental agencies of the countries.

We receive business registration certificates of enterprises and certificates of authorised agencies from either organisations or enterprises. We accept registration via email for enterprises from African countries with certification of these countries’ embassies in Vietnam. This means that we will reply on a list of enterprises African embassies in Vietnam send to us to know whether the enterprises exist or not.

 

In the coming time, we will increase the number of member enterprises. In the short term, priorities are given to those enterprises which are capable and want to do business in Africa and African enterprises who want to do business in Vietnam. We will develop and expand products introduced on the portal, gradually contacting with partners to use electronic payment services on the platform of the vnemart.com.vn trading floor.