YEREVAN (Aysor.am), March 2—In Armenia there is a potential for development of electronic commerce, but there is a lack for the necessary incentives.

Thanks to e-commerce the turnover can be quite effective for new businesses, with increased sales. Goods will be more accessible, and their costs will decline, since with store trade, the cost of goods increases. This opinion was expressed by Chairman of the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE), Hovhannes Avoyan, during the forum of ITT leaders in Aghveran.

The main obstacle in the field of e-commerce in our country, according to Avoyan, is the problem of cash and non-cash payments, as with cash commerce the income can be hidden and tax payments avoided.

“The government should submit offers to stimulate the non-cash trade. In the case of the non-cash trade, tax payment can be exempt within one year,” Avoyan said.

According to him, the issue of security is also important in e-commerce. “There is international experience in this field. For instance, the international company VeriSign provides certificates of ownership of electronic addresses for a company, because they often create false addresses and you can buy the goods, pay the bill, and then not get them,” Avoyan said.

He also said that the development of e-commerce in Armenia is also hampered by the post office, since during the purchase of certain goods, there must be confidence that it will promptly and in good condition reach the recipient, but there is no such certainty.

“There is also the problem of distribution of credit cards. For example, to receive Visa and MasterCard cards, there are no functional solutions. Armenia can also pay via PayPal, and in this regard undertakings at the governmental level are needed,” Avoyan said.

He expressed confidence that the development of e-commerce will lead to the development of Internet communication in Armenia and its price will fall sharply.

In response to the correspondent from Aysor’s question about the volume of e-commerce in Armenia, the Avoyan replied that today the volume is so small that you can only talk about individual cases.

“Our hotels do not use this feature. To some extent the airlines started to use this opportunity for online tickets, but physical goods still have a small volume. Shops are not interested in non-cash trade,” Avoyan said.

Translated from Russian by Yerevan Report

Photo credit: gotscolios