Entrepreneurs urged to embrace e-commerce

Entrepreneurs urged to embrace e-commerce

SINGAPORE (AFP): The APEC group is to rally millions of small
and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Asia-Pacific region to
embrace electronic commerce to prevent a digital divide as it
opens up trade.

The campaign by the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) to push for commerce via the Internet will
kick off with a gathering in Brunei in June of SMEs, academics,
public and private organizations.

Oil-rich Brunei on Borneo island, the current APEC chairman,
hopes to cull best practices from the industrialized member
economies and draw up a collective action plan to get e-commerce
rapidly adopted especially in developing economies.

"We're trying to make SMEs realize the need to use the
Internet as an opportunity for them to access markets," Lim Jock
Hoi, chairman of APEC's policy level group on SMEs told AFP in a
recent interview in Brunei.

The benefits of liberalization, APEC's key agenda, would
filter through faster if more SMEs adopted e-commerce, he said.

There are an estimated 40 million SMEs throughout APEC member
economies accounting for over 90 percent of all enterprises.

They employ anywhere from 32 to 84 percent of the work force,
contribute from 30 to 60 percent of gross domestic product and
account for 35 percent of exports in the region, according to
APEC.

APEC has acknowledged that its members who were struck down by
the regional financial crisis which erupted in mid-1997 could
have mitigated economic damage if their SMEs had been well
developed.

It noted as an exception Taiwan, where the strong SME sector
helped the island economy overcome the crisis.

"Chinese Taipei's experience indicates the need for other
Asian economies to create conditions conducive to the development
of SMEs," said a report on the progress of APEC economies beyond
the crisis.

It pointed out that a well-developed competitive SME sector
was not only the engine of growth but also contributed to the
resilience of an economy exposed to downside risks.

Getting hooked on e-commerce is one of four areas under study
within APEC to boost SMEs, the others being improved access to
capital, integrating entrepreneurship into the educational system
and forming strategic alliances between SMEs and their larger
counterparts, Lim explained.

"We need to make sure SMEs are well taken care of by
government and we need to work with financial institutions so
that they realize SMEs can be strong, nimble and able to grow,"
said Lim, who is also head of international relations at Brunei's
ministry of industry and primary resources.

In anticipation of borderless trade accelerated by e-commerce,
APEC hopes to assist SMEs in areas such as standards to ensure
their products are acceptable to other economies.

The workshop in June is part of a blueprint for action on e-
commerce endorsed by APEC leaders in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 and is
expected to cover a range of issues from information
infrastructure to security in information systems.

Other initiatives on the blueprint are the development of a
virtual e-commerce multimedia resource network, and the
elimination of paper documents by 2010 among member economies.

APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New
Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia,
Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.