Khon Kaen – Mekong Institute (MI) successfully concluded the one-week regional modular training on ‘Rural E-Commerce Development in the Lancang-Mekong Countries’ on October 22-26, 2018 at its Residential Training Center in Khon Kaen, Thailand.
Twenty-four participants from Cambodia, P.R. China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam (the Lancang-Mekong countries) attended the training program, with many of them coming from ministries/departments of commerce, national chambers of commerce, cooperatives and social enterprises, and e-commerce service providers. Certified and well-known trainers shared their knowledge on concepts such as trends in rural e-commerce, legislation and best practices, key development factors and business models, operating logic, tools and techniques in rural e-commerce, and delivery and transaction management of rural e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce.
As a major output of the one-week training, participants drafted a total of 23 individual action plans (AP) for implementation in their respective business models for rural e-commerce. They also formulated group APs, which included organizing a national workshop in each country by the end of the year. The six national workshops will serve as platforms for the broader transfer of knowledge to local people and foster collaborations between public and private sectors on rural e-commerce development in the countries.
In the next three months following the training, the team from the Trade and Investment Facilitation Department of MI and the resource persons will also provide on-site and online technical support and guidance to the participants in the implementation of their action plans. An online synthesis and evaluation (S&E) workshop, scheduled in February 2019, will be held to collect insights and lessons on the AP implementation of the participants.
The training program is part of a two-year project on “Action Research on Rural E-Commerce Development in Lancang–Mekong Countries” funded by the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Special Fund, in cooperation with the Ministry of Commerce of Thailand.
