Nonprofit group to develop e-trade

A number of businessmen and young electronic commerce investors formed a nonprofit group and started to work together to develop the volume of electronic trade in Saudi Arabia. Itjar group comprises an elite of specialists and parties interested in the field of electronic trade in the country and is aimed at facilitating and expediting the development and growth of electronic trade in the country in the next two years.
Through uniting and developing efforts under one umbrella, the group aims to contribute to the building of this industry (electronic commerce) in Saudi Arabia and Arab countries.
Badir program — technology incubators program at King Abdulaziz City for Science and technology — has adopted the group and provided them with a professional environment including all means that serve the project and logistics support.
Asharq Al-Awsat cited the group as saying improvement and development is the main goal and is a basis for all recommendations and decisions. It is important to create an adequate environment for future electronic trade projects in Saudi Arabia.
Yazeed Al-Taweel, head of the group, said educating traders and users of the benefits of electronic trade is one of the main targets of the group currently, as well as coordinating the transfer of experiences between existing local electronic shop owners through periodic meetings and specialized workshops where those dealings also take place within these shops receive courses. “This can also create job opportunities,” he said.
Founding member Yasser Al-Misfer said the group aspires to unite its efforts with those of the authorities regarding electronic trade and to collaborate with traders and experts to have better products and put in place frameworks for electronic commercial dealings.
The website Mauthooq (Trusted) is the first of the group’s projects. Supervised by technology and electronic trade specialists, it is designated to assess electronic shops based on strict rules and policies to verify their credibility and transparency in their dealings with people.
In a previous report earlier this year, economists estimated that the volume of electronic trade in Saudi Arabia will grow to between SR 10 billion and SR 15 billion in the next 10 years given the expansion of electronic markets and the number of Internet users in the country. Despite the fact that technology projects’ effect on the economy in the Kingdom is limited currently, it is expected that they will constitute a large portion of its GDP with the same period, when the country is also expected to dominate 30 to 45 percent of electronic trade in the Middle East.