Ministry of Industry and Trade organizes Consultation Conference on Law on E-Commerce

Attending the Conference were representatives of the Ethnic Council, the National Assembly Committee, ministries, ministerial-level agencies and relevant units under the Ministry of Industry and Trade .

Legalize e-commerce for healthy development

Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien speaks at the conference

Speaking at the conference, Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien emphasized that e-commerce plays an important role in Vietnam's market economy . In recent years, Vietnam's e-commerce has developed very strongly. The size of the e-commerce retail market currently ranks third in Southeast Asia, reaching about 25 billion USD. Of the total size of 36 billion USD of Vietnam's digital economy, e-commerce accounts for 2/3. Notably, in terms of growth rate, Vietnam is currently ranked 5th in the world.

To manage this field, recently, the Government issued Decree No. 52/2013/ND-CP dated May 16, 2013 on e-commerce and Decree No. 85/2021/ND-CP dated September 25, 2021 amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 52/2013/ND-CP.

However, according to Minister Nguyen Hong Dien, the rapid development of science and technology, along with the emergence of new business models, diverse in subjects, and complex in nature, has led to many challenges in state management of e-commerce. As a result, current policies and regulations have revealed problems that need to be overcome, such as: The legality of legal documents is still low and there is a lack of sanctions to handle violations; there are no regulations to regulate new e-commerce models, including platforms based on big data, artificial intelligence, and commerce via social networks; there is a lack of specific mechanisms for subjects participating in e-commerce, especially in determining rights and obligations. This makes it difficult to handle violations, creating an increased risk of commercial fraud and tax evasion.

"Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and Trade finds it necessary to recommend the National Assembly, the Government and competent authorities to soon develop and promulgate the Law on E-commerce to regulate and manage this field," Minister Nguyen Hong Dien emphasized.

5 policies on e-commerce

Reporting at the conference, Ms. Le Hoang Oanh - Director of the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy (Ministry of Industry and Trade) said that recently, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has urgently developed 5 sets of documents related to the dossier of the Proposal to develop the Law on E-commerce, including: Law development dossier, impact assessment report, summary report on implementation of current laws, policy proposal report. These documents have been publicly posted on the Government's e-portal and the Ministry of Industry and Trade's e-portal since January 17, 2025 to widely collect opinions from organizations and individuals according to regulations.

Ms. Le Hoang Oanh - Director of the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy (Ministry of Industry and Trade) spoke at the conference.

Based on the assessment of practical implementation and identification of necessary contents that need to be supplemented and completed to formulate e-commerce policies in the coming time, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has identified 5 major policy groups, including: (1) Supplementing and unifying concepts according to current legal regulations; (2) Regulating forms of e-commerce activities, subjects participating in e-commerce activities, related rights and obligations with the goal of ensuring that no e-commerce activity models and subjects are left out; ensuring transparency in authority and clarity in the limits of responsibility of state management agencies at all levels; (3) Responsibilities of units providing e-commerce support services; (4) Regulations on e-contract certification services in commerce with the goal of fair treatment for types of reliable service providers; promptly detecting and handling violations of laws related to e-contracts; (5) Regulations on the construction and development of e-commerce to institutionalize the viewpoints, policies and guidelines of the Party and Government on promoting the development of e-commerce; promoting green and sustainable development of e-commerce, contributing to effective economic development, creating value for the community, contributing to building a fair society and minimizing negative impacts on the environment.

According to Director Le Hoang Oanh, before organizing the conference, the Ministry of Industry and Trade had collected opinions from ministries, branches and provincial and municipal People's Committees on the summary of the implementation of e-commerce law, comprehensively assessed the impact of the E-commerce Law policy, reviewed international laws and international commitments related to the field of e-commerce.

" The comments are basically consistent with the five policies proposed in the dossier for drafting the Law on E-commerce ," Ms. Le Hoang Oanh emphasized.

At the conference, delegates representing the Ethnic Councils, Committees of the National Assembly and ministries and ministerial-level agencies gave their opinions; accordingly, the opinions basically agreed on the necessity of soon promulgating the Law on E-commerce and major policy groups in the draft Law; at the same time, focusing on reflecting the difficulties and limitations in the enforcement of e-commerce laws that need to be resolved and suggesting contents that need to be further studied to supplement the draft Law, such as: Management of e-commerce activities on specific models, cross-border e-commerce; the role and responsibility of intermediary service providers supporting e-commerce activities, etc.

After listening to the opinions of the delegates and concluding the conference, Minister Nguyen Hong Dien summarized the consensus of the delegates at the Conference on the urgency of soon developing and promulgating the Law on E-commerce; the name of the draft Law; the political, legal and practical bases of the draft Law; major policy groups that need to be stipulated in the draft Law; the structure and layout of the draft Law and other necessary issues.

The Minister acknowledged and thanked the enthusiastic and responsible comments of the delegates and assigned the Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy as the drafting unit to focus on researching and absorbing the valid comments of the delegates at today's Conference and the comments of the ministries, branches and localities to continue to complete the Proposal for the development of the Law on E-commerce, submit it to the competent authority for consideration, and include it in the Law and Ordinance Development Program of the National Assembly in 2025, as a basis for developing the draft Law and submitting it to the National Assembly at the end of the year 2025./.

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Source: https://moit.gov.vn/tin-tuc/hoat-dong/hoat-dong-cua-lanh-dao-bo/bo-cong-thuong-to-chuc-hoi-nghi-tham-van-ve-luat-thuong-mai-dien-tu.html