BayanTrade records P2.5-B transactions in first 4 months

The e-commerce bandwagon has definitely caught on in the Philippines as a significant volume of transactions – valued at more than P2.5 billion – has been registered in the first four months alone by BayanTrade, the country’s leading business-to-business (B2B) online platform.

From January to April this year, BayanTrade’s value pass through had exceeded P1.5 billion or already 45 percent of VPT (the volume of bidding and procurement deals passing through the portal) for the whole of 2001, said Carol Carreon, BayanTrade president and CEO.

She attributed this gain to the growth in their e-bidding and e-catalog purchasing services as she noted the growing acceptance of businesses of the benefits of e-commerce.

Carreon noted that the number of bids increased 350 percent in the first quarter of 2002, resulting in the huge jump in value awarded from P250 million to P1.2 billion.

In e-catalog purchasing (a process which enable buyers to purchase various materials posted by suppliers in the electronic catalogue board), purchase orders had grown by a whopping 900 percent from 1,126 to 10,561 during the quarter.

"Buyers in our e-bidding events on average save 12 percent in direct costs using BayanTrade," Carreon said. "That’s significant because many thought that margins would be narrow."

She noted in the past year alone, over 200 regular buyers have linked up with BayanTrade with the number of suppliers now exceeding 400. With the rate of the VPT growth, an estimated P10 billion worth of deals could be logged on this year, Carreon said, driven by the bidding, catalog, procurement and other services and solutions.

Among the value-added services in the BayanTrade portfolio expected to fuel further growth in e-commerce are e-financials and e-logistics.

Carreon said that despite the increased linkup in the e-commerce platform, the potential for growth remains huge since BayanTrade accounts for just one percent of all enterprise spending in the Philippines.

BayanTrade is a B2B e-marketplace that provides both indirect supplies (general office supplies, computer, furniture, etc.) to a cross-section of industries and direct materials to the construction, semiconductor and electronics, and power industries.

BayanTrade was founded nearly two years by a consortium made up of six of the country’s biggest conglomerates: Ayala Corp., Benpres Holdings, JG Summit Holdings, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, PLDT, and United Laboratories.