Country's e-Commerce sector faces loss of more than Tk 1700 crore during the recent turbulent situation and ongoing internet connectivity crisis for the last 13 days, said Ecommerce Association of Bangladesh ECAB in a press conference on Wednesday.
ECAB President Shomi Kaiser, while addressing the press conference, organised by the association at its Banani office, demanded to arrange credit facility up to a minimum amount on easy terms for the loosing ecommerce and f-commerce entrepreneurs.
She said currently there are more than 5 lakh F-Commerce entrepreneurs in Bangladesh while the number of people dependent on this sector is at least 2 million, including several lakh e-commerce workers, suppliers and allied businesses. Nearly 50,000 delivery service workers across the country are serving more than 8 lakh families every day. She mentioned that this service is growing at the rate of 25% every year. Although the e-commerce sector is still in its infancy, its potential is immense. As its range has increased across the world, Bangladesh will not be an exception. Due to the recent unexpected situation, mainly due to the blockage of various roads it was not possible to provide smooth delivery of goods and then due to internet shutdown, online business was stopped completely.
The daily e-commerce transactions of around Tk 120 crores were stopped. Those who used to sell groceries, food products and perishable goods such as fish and meat online, they were run into problems with orders and stocks and suffer huge losses.
If we talk about online business only then almost all the sub-sectors of e-commerce have been affected. For example, f-commerce entrepreneurs, online shop based e-commerce entrepreneurs and marketplaces, e-tourism entrepreneurs, logistics or delivery service entrepreneurs, ride share, content, drop shipping, freelancing digital marketers and e-learning entrepreneurs, e-commerce based suppliers and online pharmacies and all serving platforms.
In the first 10 days the sector faced loss of nearly Tk 1400 crore.
A major part of this is from f-commerce entrepreneurs, which amounts to at least Tk 600 crore. In e-commerce logistics it can be at least Tk 100 crore and in e-tourism it is about Tk 300 crore. Entrepreneurs who have bank loans need to extend the period of at least 06 months for repayment of loan money and installments. As small entrepreneurs, they do business on Facebook, their business has suffered a lot.
She also mentioned about creating an alternative platform of Facebook.
