The first suggestion on the development of rural e-commerce: supporting all kinds of capital and total production

The first comprehensive deployment of rural e-commerce documents officially landed.

On August 31,19 departments including the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued Opinions on Accelerating the Development of Rural E-commerce (hereinafter referred to as Opinions).

"This is the first time that the Ministry of Commerce has specifically put forward opinions on the development of rural e-commerce. Although the industry calls it blue ocean, by the first half of this year, rural e-commerce in China accounted for only about 2.5% of the overall sales of agricultural products, while other areas accounted for more than 20% of e-commerce sales," Zhang Li, deputy director of the E-commerce Research Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said in an interview with the 21st Century Economic Report.

Compared with this year's No.1 document of the Central Committee, which proposes "supporting e-commerce, logistics, commerce, finance and other enterprises to participate in the construction of agriculture-related e-commerce platforms", the Opinions are more open to social capital, not only encouraging all kinds of capital to develop rural e-commerce, but also further clearly proposing "supporting e-commerce, logistics, commerce, finance, postal services, express delivery and other social capital to strengthen cooperation".

Policy frequently adds code to rural e-commerce

As a new business model, from 2010 to 2015, the contents of "developing e-commerce","strengthening the construction of e-commerce platform for agricultural products" and "carrying out comprehensive demonstration of e-commerce into rural areas" are clearly appearing in the No.1 document of the Central Committee.

Since the beginning of this year, rural e-commerce support policies have continued to increase. In May, the State Council issued the Opinions on Vigorously Developing E-commerce and Accelerating the Cultivation of New Economic Power; subsequently, the Ministry of Commerce also formulated the "Internet + Circulation" Action Plan, which clearly defined that within 1-2 years, 200 e-commerce comprehensive demonstration counties will be established and cultivated nationwide, and the e-commerce transaction volume of demonstration counties will increase by no less than 30% annually on the existing basis.

A few days ago, the central government has allocated 3.7 billion yuan of support funds to 200 counties in 26 provinces in the central and western regions to carry out comprehensive demonstrations of e-commerce in rural areas in 2015.

Rural e-commerce not only provides a publicity platform for agricultural products sales, but also further opens up the supply chain, which is conducive to agricultural products "going out" and two-way expansion of rural consumption market. However, Cui Pengliang, an analyst of Zhuochuang Information Huinong E-commerce Department, thinks that based on factors such as short shelf life and transportation efficiency of agricultural products themselves,"Internet is more just a publicity platform for farmers, and it is not obvious that offline consumption is actually driven online."

Compared with the current development trend of China's e-commerce in full swing, the rural consumption of nearly 600 million people presents an asymmetric pattern of "big market" and "small farmers". At present, the development of rural e-commerce is still in its infancy.

"Rural e-commerce penetration rate is still very low, to be called e-commerce CPU logistics costs, for example, some places single distribution costs are about 10 yuan, even higher than the price of the goods themselves", Zhang Li found in the survey, at present China's e-commerce into rural areas need to overcome layers of obstacles, including farmers to the Internet business model acceptance, rural network infrastructure construction and logistics distribution efficiency, product standardization, talent and management experience and other multiple barriers.

In view of the problems existing in the development of rural e-commerce at present, the Opinions put forward 10 measures from the aspects of cultivating diversified e-commerce market subjects, strengthening rural e-commerce infrastructure construction, and creating rural e-commerce development environment: one is to support e-commerce, logistics, commerce, finance and other types of capital to develop rural e-commerce; the other is to actively cultivate rural e-commerce service enterprises; third, encourage farmers to rely on e-commerce for entrepreneurship; Fourth, strengthen rural broadband, highway and other infrastructure construction; fifth, improve rural logistics distribution capacity; sixth, build a multi-level development platform; seventh, increase financial support; eighth, strengthen the cultivation of rural e-commerce talents; ninth, standardize rural e-commerce market order; tenth, carry out demonstration publicity and promotion.

Encourage all kinds of capital to participate in the whole industry chain

It should be noted that the 10 measures put supporting e-commerce, logistics, commerce, finance, postal services, express delivery and other social capital strengthening cooperation in the first place, indicating that the next step of developing rural e-commerce will further strengthen the opening to social capital.

"Because a lot of foreign capital has not flowed to agriculture for a long time, the government has begun to increase social capital investment in agriculture in recent years, but it can't find the direction and investment point, so this time it encourages an investment point-rural e-commerce," Zhang Li said."This not only shows the government's investment direction, but also shows that during the 13th Five-Year Plan period,'Internet + agriculture' may have a big development."

In Zhang Li's view, rural e-commerce itself is a long investment chain, not just an e-commerce platform, but also a series of industries such as rural e-commerce logistics, standardized packaging of agricultural products, inspection and testing of agricultural products, research and development of agricultural products, etc. Social capital around these fields can be invested, and the profit space is considerable.

BOC International recently reported that by 2014, China's rural e-commerce has developed rapidly, and there have been nearly 4000 e-commerce related transactions. Ali Research Institute predicts that by 2016, the total amount of rural online shopping market in China is likely to exceed 460 billion yuan.

With the help of policies and market demand, rural e-commerce will usher in explosive growth in the future, and the capital market will also move. On July 20, Suning Yunshang held hands with Chongqing and became the first rural e-commerce strategic partner of Chongqing City; on July 31, Alibaba married Shaanxi Province, and both parties signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement to launch e-commerce, intelligent logistics and other fields.

"Rural e-commerce entry threshold is low, competing layout is easy to form disorderly competition, resulting in fratricidal", Zhang Li reminded that future investment in rural e-commerce needs to be combined with local agricultural characteristics to avoid "everyone does not do it is difficult to do, everyone does it and disorderly competition" phenomenon.