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Mark O'Neill

The turnover of e-commerce in the mainland has been projected to hit 800 million yuan (about HK$748.32 million) this year, four times that of last year, with five new Web sites coming on-line each day.

 But experts were sceptical of the figures reported in the Beijing Youth Daily, saying that they were not reliable and that mainland e-commerce remained in its infancy.

 From tomorrow to Saturday, the Ministry of Information Industry is hosting the Fourth China International e-commerce summit, which is expected to attract more than 300 information-technology companies from around the world.

 Mainland companies are rushing to catch up with the rest of the world in e-commerce.

 As of the end of January, the mainland had 200 sites offering e-commerce employing 5,000 people. There will be more than 1,000 sites by the end of the year, the newspaper said.

 The sectors which have moved fastest into e-commerce are securities, education, tourism, employment agencies, property, cars, IT products, books, pharmaceuticals and health products, with firms from the traditional industries putting their products on line.

 The newspaper estimated that the volume of e-commerce in the mainland will reach 10 billion yuan (about HK$9.34 billion) by 2002.

 But Yin Zhihe, executive chairman of the Beijing Software Industry Association, said such figures were not reliable.

 'The government has published no official figures on this,' he said.

 'The Internet is a bubble economy. China is still a developing country and e-commerce is not secure.'  He said many transactions over the Internet still required traditional settlement.



Doubt cast on projected jump in e-commerce sales