HE Dr Hessa al-Jaber
A section of the participants at the forum. PICTURE: Thajudheen.

By Joseph Varghese
Staff Reporter


Enforcing an e-transactions law, opening up the postal service, implementing the “Qbuy programme” and handling on-line consumer protection issues are some of the measures mooted by the government for the Qatar National e-Commerce Roadmap.
“We are working to overcome a number of inhibitors impeding the development of a robust e-commerce ecosystem in Qatar,” HE the Minister of Information and Communications Technology Dr Hessa al-Jaber stated at the opening of  Qatar’s e-Commerce Forum yesterday.
The inhibitors, according to the minister, include “a regulatory framework that needs further clarification, implementation and communication, limited e-payment options, outdated delivery systems; low online presence of local merchants and limited e-commerce conversion of digital browsers”.
Dr al-Jaber explained the government had put a policy in place to liberalise postal delivery and making suitable amendments to the postal law. It is also handling on-line consumer protection issues along side off-line consumer protection issues.
“We are enforcing an e-transactions law by issuing a suitable set of policies and guidelines that will be developed by stakeholders coming together as joint working groups. We are implementing the “Qbuy Programme” as an information hub to empower merchants, consumers, start-ups and e-commerce service providers in Qatar,” added the minister.
She maintained that the biggest challenge for most e-commerce businesses was to collect, store and organise data from multiple data sources. She hinted that this could be overcome with the better use of Big Data.
“There is certainly a lot of data waiting to be analysed and it is a daunting task for some e-commerce businesses to make sense of it all. Big Data paves the way for more organised data and enables business owners or marketing managers to track and better understand a variety of information from many different sources,” Dr al-Jaber pointed out.
“The e-commerce companies analysing Big Data can lead to personalisation of the customers; provide dynamic pricing or offers that fit customer profile; improve customer service by co-ordinating  various communication channels; help in supply chain management by determining patterns and assist in predictive analytics to derive a more in-depth picture of the different channels in your business, including sales and inventory.”
Qatar is currently the seventh largest business to consumer market in the Mena region with a current market size of just over $1bn. This is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17% over the next five years. Qatar also has the highest average annual e-commerce spend per user in the Mena region and an average value per online transaction higher than the average of the other GCC countries.
The forum  had several panel discussions and presentations from some of the top e-Commerce experts in the region. The discussions  pointed to business models and funding as well as changing landscape of e-Commerce.