Thai govt to sign a deal with Shopee in bid to help farmers tap e-commerce platform
In order to encourage farmers to sell products online, Thailand’s Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives would sign a memorandum of understanding with Shopee, a popular e-commerce platform, expecting the product sales through the online platform to increase by nearly 30 per cent.
Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Chalermchai Sreeon said that the COVID-19 outbreak had increased the popularity of online shopping.
“This is an opportunity to promote Thai farmers to sell products online and increase marketing channels in order to enable consumers to buy products with high quality and reasonable prices directly from farmers,” he said.
“We will organise training courses to enable farmers to sell agricultural products via online channels,” he added.
The minister stated that the government aims to train about 1,000 farmers this year. He explained that the cooperation with Lazada Thailand, a leading online shopping platform, to promote Thai farmers to sell products online since the beginning of this year, had been successful and had gained attention from several farmers.
He added that the ministry will inquire farmers who are not able to achieve the sales targets about the problems and obstacles they face.