Thailand inks MoU to bring farmers online

THAILAND’S Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives is set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Singapore-based shopping platform Shopee on Wednesday encouraging Thai farmers to sell products online.

The ministry expects product sales via the Shopee platform to increase by approximately 30 per cent.

Mi n i ster Cha ler mcha i Sre e on noted t hat t he Cov id-19 outbrea k had i ncrea sed t he popu la r it y of online shopping.

Shopee is a large well-known e-commerce platform in the region, so this is an opportunity to promote Thai farmers to sell products online and increase marketing channels to enable consumers to buy high quality products at reasonable prices directly from farmers, he said.

Chalermchai said: “We will organise training courses to enable farmers to sell agricultura l products v ia online channels.

“We aim to train approximately 1,000 farmers this year, while expecting product sales via Shopee platform would increase by approximately 30 per cent, or approximately three billion baht [$95.6 million].”

He explained that the cooperation with Lazada ( Thailand) Co Ltd, 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 said: “After farmers opened 113 online stores on Lazada to sell products for four months, 30 per cent of online stores had generated sales of over 30 per cent, while another 70 per cent of online stores had generated sales below 30 per cent.

“We a im to tra in 500 fa rmers to sel l products v ia t he La zada platform t his year.”

He added that the ministry will inquire farmers who are unable to achieve the sales target about problems and obstacles to improve their potential.