The plan projects 100,000 micro, small and medium enterprises and 30% of the Philippine population engaged in online businesses by 2020, supported by an “effective” merchant and consumer protection mechanism.

“We’re finalizing the road map and hope to launch it next month. It should’ve been done years ago, but better late than never,” DTI Director Maria Lourdes A. Yaptinchay said during yesterday’s Pinoy E-commerce Forum in Makati City.

She said e-commerce is “not as a stand-alone plan,” as it will need support from other government initiatives like the National Broadband Plan that will be completed this year, led by the Information and Communications Technology Office.

“We hope that by 2020, e-commerce will be 25% of the country’s GDP,” Ms. Yaptinchay said.

She noted that one key hurdle is the current state of electronic payment, which was also noted in the same forum by Inanc Balci, co-founder and chief executive officer of online marketplace Lazada in the Philippines.

Mr. Balci pointed out that the Philippines is still a “cash-based economy.”

Still, e-commerce has a lot of untapped business potential, with 50 million Filipinos expected to go online in 2015, according to Google Philippines Head Kenneth Lingan. He said this is growing by six to eight million annually

“The next generation of Filipinos will be mobile-first, but many businesses are not yet pivoting to a mobile-first approach,” Mr. Lingan added in the same venue. — Daphne J. Magturo