PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea, April 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- April 25, 2016 in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 600 local business owners attended the APEC Cross-Border E-Commerce (CBET) Workshop, for an introduction of the e-commerce industry. Eager citizens from the Pacific Island nation with only 2% internet penetration and a government that is moving quickly to change that, witnessed industry experts from Google, DHgate.com, ABAC China, eCargo, and WeCash give presentations. The event was initiated by the government of Papua New Guinea and DHgate.com, with the hopes of starting a conversation about spurring economic growth through e-commerce.
'APEC CBET PAPUA NEW GUINEA WORKSHOP'
Industry experts representing the entire cross-border e-commerce ecosystem, including: platform operation, online marketing, cross-border payment, trust and safety, international logistics, customer service, and internet finance introduced their role in the industry value chain.
The audiences' eyes lit up when a 26 year old Chinese entrepreneur described his personal cross-border e-commerce success story. He explained how his business started as a team of 4 people, and just a year and a half later, has over 100 employees, his own factory, and customer support centers in the US and the UK.
Workshop organizers planned to end the workshop with a 20 min Q+A session, but the audience had so many questions, it was extended to over an hour long before moderators cut it off. It then took the speakers another whole hour to leave the conference room because of the amount of people who stayed to ask more questions. Multiple members of the audience commented that they wished the workshop lasted multiple days instead of just one.
'THE GREAT POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH'
According to a report for APEC by the USC Marshall School of Business, "The case study of Papua New Guinea provides a thought experiment on how to develop a mature e-commerce ecosystem from a blank slate in the shortest possible amount of time." Specifically if they outline "the path an economy can take to facilitate the development of cross-border e-commerce by benchmarking the successes and avoiding the mistakes made by other economies in APEC." The government of Papua New Guinea currently plans to upgrade it's existing internet cables, as well as add more this year, in order to increase usage among the population.
'APEC CROSS-BORDER E-COMMERCE TRAINING'
APEC CBET Workshops introduce small businesses to e-commerce, and have been regularly held throughout the APEC region since 2013. CBET workshops have educated SMEs from Mainland China, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, the USA, Canada, and now Papua New Guinea. DHgate.com CEO Diane Wang said, "The feedback of every workshop has always been positive, it has become very apparent to me that we are truly doing something effective and meaningful. Expect plenty of more workshops in the future."
'ABOUT DHgate.com'
DHgate.com is the oldest and the biggest transactional cross border B2B e-commerce marketplace in China. We provide global buyers with quality products at competitive prices. Founded in 2004, DHgate.com has approximately 10 million buyers from 230 countries and regions, with 1.2 million sellers offering 33 million products. DHgate.com is an all-in-one platform with integrated services for logistics, cross border payments, internet financing, etc. Visit http://www.dhgate.com. For more information please e-mail opr@dhgate.com or call +86-10-8202-8870 x2398.
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