Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on E-Commerce Senator Aon Abbas Buppi said Thursday that the country’s e-commerce trade would be enhanced up to $9.1 billion by 2020. Talking to APP, he said, Pakistan was an emerging e-commerce market and had the potential to excel in regional markets and also emerge as a major player in coming years. He said, in the $30 trillion global e-commerce market, the country’s e-commerce market was only $4 billion in terms of revenue, which is far less than its regional competitors. Aon Abbas Buppi said that by promoting e-commerce trade in Pakistan, “we can balance our trade deficit which will lead to improve the country’s economic growth.” He said that the market volume in e-commerce was bigger than the traditional trade, adding that this was an opportunity for the young population to utilize it and play an effective role in the economic development. “Recently we organized an e-commerce convention in which the Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan participated and there was a very good response from different segments of society,” he remarked. He said that with the personal interest of Prime Minister Imran Khan, various initiatives were being taken for the development of the e-commerce sector, focusing on tax and ease of doing business and freelance issues. He said payments and banking, taxation, business registration, freelancers startups, market excess, logistics and shipping, market access, consumer protection and data protection were important areas that are being worked on. The SAPM said that the government had introduced the country’s first zero-tax strategy for registered freelancers. At present Pakistan is the third largest digital market in the world and in this “we are competing with India.” He said that issues related to companies and individual data in e-commerce trade were resolved by launching e-Tijarat portal for which Asian Development Bank was providing financial and technical assistance. In addition, research facilities and other support were also being put in place to promote e-commerce. The E-Tijarat portal would help boost trade and help overall economic development by promoting “Made in Pakistan” products in regional and global markets. He expressed the hope that e-commerce would promote different sectors including mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), automated data collection systems. He said, the growth of e-commerce has opened new avenues of economic growth to a country but the openness of the internet and data processing by local and international e-commerce companies has increased the risk of misuse of personal data of its citizens. Therefore, many countries were introducing regulatory measures to curtail the risk of data breaches and its subsequent misuse. Aoun Abbas Buppi said that the government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has introduced the first e-commerce policy in October 2019, which would create new avenues of employment opportunities for the youth of the country. Aon Abbas said that E-Commerce policy provides communities with a guideline on how they can take advantage of this innovative opportunity. He said the country currently has more than 50 percent youth population for whom there would be huge job opportunities in the e-commerce sector.