Nguyen Minh Tien, Director of the Agricultural and Environmental Trade Promotion Center (Ministry of Agriculture and Environment), made the proposal at the "Digital Trust: The Future of E-commerce" seminar on 17/7.
As of 1/7, the country has over 3,300 communes following administrative unit rearrangements. According to Tien, to take advantage of the growing e-commerce channel, management agencies and sales platforms can cooperate to support each commune in accessing this market.
"Why don't we aim to support every commune in engaging in e-commerce? From there, local leaders can tell the story of their agricultural products and raw material areas, building trust with consumers," he said.
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Nguyen Minh Tien (white shirt) at the seminar on 17/7. Photo: TikTok Shop Vietnam Summit 2025 |
Nguyen Minh Tien (white shirt) at the seminar on 17/7. Photo: TikTok Shop Vietnam Summit 2025
Tien shared his experience from 2023, when the Agricultural Trade Promotion Center collaborated with an e-commerce platform to bring agricultural products online, creating a ripple effect, attracting attention, and raising awareness of Vietnamese agricultural products.
He believes it's time for agricultural products to compete on value, not just price, and to actively approach the domestic market of 100 million people rather than just "exporting the best products". Online channels are convenient for telling product stories and tracing origins, especially with close cooperation between e-commerce platforms and state management agencies.
Recently, several localities have proactively approached online sales to find more outlets for agricultural products. For example, in the "Proudly Vietnamese Goods" livestream session on 28/4, two leaders of the Thai Nguyen Department of Industry and Trade, along with nearly 20 content creators, directly introduced the locality's typical OCOP products.
At the end of June, Pham Van Thinh, Vice Chairman of the Bac Ninh Provincial People's Committee, and his associates successfully sold over 54 tons of Luc Ngan lychees in a special livestream session within the framework of Luc Ngan Lychee Week – part of the province's digital transformation plan.
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Pham Van Thinh (third from right) participating in the livestream session on 29/6. Photo: Provided by the subject |
Pham Van Thinh (third from right) participating in the livestream session on 29/6. Photo: Provided by the subject
Nguyen Phan Huy Khoi, Director of the Youth Startup Support Center, Vietnam Youth Federation, praised the idea of helping communes nationwide sell agricultural products online as "impressive" and expressed his willingness to participate.
"E-commerce is no longer a choice but an indispensable sales platform, a part of the market," Khoi commented. Recently, the center has supported over 20,000 young startups within the framework of the project to enhance digital capacity for 20 million Vietnamese youth by 2030.
According to e-commerce solutions provider YouNet ECI, Vietnam's e-commerce market reached a record transaction value of over 13.8 billion USD in 2024, a 40% increase compared to the previous year. This figure only accounts for gross merchandise volume (GMV) on multi-sector online platforms and far exceeds initial forecasts from last year.
In Quarter I, statistics from the e-commerce data platform Metric show that the GMV of the four largest platforms, including Shopee, TikTok Shop, Lazada, and Tiki, reached 101,400 billion VND, an increase of over 42% compared to the same period in 2024. The grocery-food group had the fourth-highest sales among product categories, with a GMV of nearly 6,300 billion VND, up nearly 80% compared to the same period in 2023.
With the increasing trend of online shopping for agricultural and food products, Sendo, a domestic multi-sector e-commerce platform, decided to transition into a specialized online agricultural product channel called Sendo Farm in April. The platform said it has mapped Vietnamese agricultural products corresponding to each harvest season and committed to output.
Vien Thong
