E-commerce as an important tool in developing One Belt One Road and 16+1 cooperation.

Dr. Jerzy Rzymanek

The President of Central and Eastern Europe – China Association of Exporters and Importers

 

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

It is a great honor for me, as the President of Central and Eastern Europe – China Association of Exporters and Importers to address the First Sino–Polish Conference on Silk Road E-commerce organized on the occassion of H.E. President Xi Jinping visit to Poland.

The visit of Chinese President Xi is of historic importance in Polish –Chinese political, economic and cultural relations. We believe that his visit will open a new era in these relations.

President Xi visit in Poland is of great importance not only for Polish-Chinese relations,but to our whole region of Central and Eastern Europe, since Poland and China are actively cooperating in One Belt One Road and 16 +1 initiatives.

E-commerce, is the new and export-oriented economic developing mode.

Thus, the cross-border e-commerce is a new international type of trade, which can realize the procedure transparency based on the information technology. It is very convenient and fast without being limited to the regions.

The development of cross-border e-commerce can become the new approach to deal with the international trade, which plays an important role in realizing the transformation and upgrading the foreign trade in Poland and the Central and Eastern Europe.

Cross-border e-commerce can become the tool to ballance trade relations between China and Central and Eastern Europe.

China and CEE countries should uphold the principle of mutual respect, treating each other equally, and cooperate to achieve win-win results.

China and CEE countries should understand each other’s core interests and major concerns. One of the major concerns for all CEE countries is their unbalanced volume of trade with China.

Therefore, we should explore today at the conference and in future the opportunities linked to cross-border e-commerce.

I apply to Business leaders from Poland, China and CEE countries to tap the potential of cross-border e-commerce as we are making advances on Belt and Road and 16 +1 initiatives.

China is at present the world’s second largest economy and the EU’s second largest trading partner behind the United States.

China is a major importer of foreign goods, and the purchasing power of the Chinese population is vastly growing. China is a country full of opportunity and promise, especially when it comes to e-commerce.

China has recently surpassed the US as biggest e-commerce market in the world.

China is rapidly becoming more urbanised but retail presence has not kept pace with the growth of existing cities and the building of new ones. China’s retail market is highly fragmented due to large geographic distances between town centres and high regional disparities in income. This is an opportunity for e-commerce players who are able to offer a far greater diversity of products than are found on local shelves, and who reap the benefits from government
drives to improve countrywide internet access.

CHINA has more internet users than the entire population of the United States.

The number of Chinese consumers buying online via foreign websites is steadily increasing. According to Chinese online shopping giant Alibaba, cross-border e-commerce in China will account for revenues of approximately 156.6 billion euro by 2018.

The importance of cross-border e-commerce on the Chinese political agenda has also increased, which has resulted in several measures facilitating online trading towards China in the areas of logistics, customs and shop registration. It is for example not required to have a Chinese entity, import duty and VAT are not applicable and also several other barriers have been significantly eased.

The Chinese government also launched several pilot-zones for cross-border e-commerce, in cities including Hangzhou, Shanghai and Chongqing.

However,there are some challenges for foreign sellers on the Chinese market, including language barriers, logistics to the more rural areas and finding their way in the complicated and dynamic regulatory system. Chinese customers, are often unfamiliar with foreign e-commerce web page designs, the English language and credit card payments

Working with a local partner is a very smart thing to do in order to address those challenges. Fot this reason I strongly suggest to cooperate with the organizers of today’s e-commerce conference.

What are Interesting sectors in China for CEE exporters ?

The fast and easy answer to this question is :all the sectors are very interesting , since Chinese market is huge.

However, since our knowledge about modern China is poor and knowledge about Central and Eastern Europe is also poor, I suggest to start from some sectors where the prospects are very promisible.

First sector that I would suggest is : „Food and beverage”.

Poland and other CEE countries are leading manufacturers of high quality food products in European Union.

„ In China meat, alcoholic drinks and dairy products account according to some reports for around 66 percent of China’s food and beverage imports. We should explore this potential.

The second sector I would suggest are Luxury products.

Purchasing power in China is increasing, and luxury goods from abroad are becoming the focus for the young, affluent generation of Chinese buyers. Chinese customers are increasingly developing a fashion taste inspired by Western brands and culture.

Aside from fashion, popular luxury categories also include gems, jewelry and beauty products.

For our Chinese guest and partners I have prepared some data about Polish e-commerce market

In Poland we have about 38.54 million of people of which about 19 million has internet access.

70% of them uses internet every day, The internet quality is not the best. 70% of internet population uses connections that are weaker than 30 mbs.

75 % of housholds has internet.

Polish e-commerce market is valued at 30 billion Polish Zloties.

The biggest internet seller in Poland is South African Nespers, portal Allegro. In 2015 it had the 57,4 % access to internet population.It has about 12,5 million users.

The secon seller is Ceneo, prices comparing portal. The other places have e-shop operated by Onet, Wirtual Poland and Empik.

Poland and Central Europe continues to perform well in ecommerce and the market in online is doing well across many product areas. The opportunities for e-commerce expansion to take more of the overall shopping basket are clear to see, with cross-border selling accelerating and more people becoming comfortable shopping online.

In terms of growth, Poland leads the region: over the last few years, this market has attracted the attention of many large international multichannel players, such as Tesco and Carrefour, and naturally pure-play giant Amazon as well.

The Ecommerce Europe Reports are showing that Poland realized the strongest online retail growth in Europe. The Polish economy is developing steadily and Polish and CEE Internet users are hungry for new and exciting buys.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me express my sincere hope that the Chinese President Xi visit in Poland accompanied by important business delegation will result in future in balancing trade between the CEE countries and China; what is one of the goals of One Belt One Road and 16 + 1 strategies.

Thank you for your attention.

Warsaw, Poland 20 June,2016.

Artykuł dodano w następujących kategoriach: Konferencje.