JEDDAH – e-Commerce in Saudi Arabia is expected to increase in the next two years to SR50 billion ($13 billion), with the Kingdom holding 45 percent of the volume of e-Commerce in the Middle East. E-Commerce is relatively new in the area in comparison with neighboring countries, and its growth has been helped by the Internet and all those related to it. Also the legal environment helps, coupled with limited regulations for this kind of activity. Alabd Al-Karim, executive director of the Center for the Encouragement and Development of Business at Princess Nora University, told the first businesswomen forum in the field of e-Commerce in Riyadh recently. She said the stress was on the technical side but most of the problems were related to start-up projects forecasting that e-Commerce in Saudi Arabia would increase to SR50 billion by 2015. He added that 60 percent of those who own e-Commerce websites are women and the Alam Hawa platform serves 250 women traders. Al-Karim said that one of the main problems was to find an accredited payment mechanism or a system for e-Commerce in the Kingdom. Duna Al-Sayari, owner of the qartasiya website, said the visitors to these sites required more awareness, in the administration of their projects and experience to deal with investors. “We need to make the owners of these projects more aware to make their websites more successful and I think the first stage is very important.” Shrouq Al-Oufi, another businesswoman said the biggest challenge she faced was the acceptance of people to buy direct from the site. Jawaher Al-Mudbil, who sells fashion retail, said she encourages the opening up of more channels with customers, either paying on delivery or through the social marketing websites. The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) markets had an inflow of funds worth $655 million in May, which marks the highest recorded inflows to the region in five years. According to a report released by Deutsche Bank on Sunday, Saudi Arabia topped the markets with $308 million worth of inflows, while Qatar recorded $131 million, Dubai posted $129 million, Kuwait registered $47 million and Abu Dhabi had $40 million. The high investments entering the region is credited to a number of factors. “The federal and corporate balance sheets are in much better state than some developed markets [and] regions and the growth prospects, specifically the non-oil part of the economy, [is] superior,” said Aleksandar Stojanovski, research analyst at Deutsche Bank. MENA markets recorded around $2 billion in net inflows since the start of the year, while posting an outflow of $192 million during the corresponding period last year, the report added. The improvement in the markets' performance is clear. Dubai is up more than 47 percent year-to-date while Abu Dhabi rose by 39 percent, followed by Kuwait at 35 percent. Meanwhile, Oman was up 16 percent, Qatar 14 percent, Saudi Arabia 11 percent, Bahrain 13 percent and Jordan three percent. However, Egypt was down 14 percent. According to Stojanovski, the recent upgrade of Qatar and the UAE to emerging markets status by the global index compiler MSCI has boosted international investor confidence in the two Gulf countries. “[The boost in investor confidence] will further leverage the regions' visibility to represent a potential $400 to $450 million of incremental funds inflows for each country,” he said. – SG
