The Commissioner for Trade and Investment, Rt. Hon. Dr. Cosmos Chukwudi Ndukwe has disclosed that the Ministry would be looking forward to digitalizing the Ministry as well as opening a Department of the E-commerce that would enable traders in the State to be known within and outside the shores of the country without much stress.
Dr. Ndukwe, who made the disclosure to ABIA ONLINE in an exclusive interview, equally hinted that enumeration of traders has already started for the Digital Concept.
According to him, since the world was advancing technologically by day, the Ministry has plans to buy a space in the digital world that would make traders not only be heard but also to be seen, adding that People need to know where a particular trader.is trading at a particular point, ways you can get at the particular place, a particular station, or at a particular bank.
While noting that the days of yellow pages were over as people are now going so quick and going digital, the Commissioner informed, “I’m going to open up trade place that will contain all these Markets, so at the press of a button through your Android or iPhone, you will be able to go into the market place and be able to see the market that you want to trade or the trader you want to buy from. So that our strength cannot just be a seasonal market, people can now trade within the rainy season and outside the rainy season.”
On the progress made so far with the project, Ndukwe has this to say:
“We’re going to open a website. Already now, for the Abia Market Place Enrollment, we have developed a data sheet form that will contain the market name, the zone, the owner’s name, phone number, business address, email, business category and shop status. These forms are already in the zones and moving round the market and they are free for the enumeration and no trader is meant to pay a dime. We’re going to collect these enrollment data sheet manually and then fill it into the central computer system and then it will help us even in revenue collection, in knowing who our traders are, it will help us also in digitalizing our manual entry data, so that at the press of a button you can now know what you are doing in the market place.
In each of this Market Place Enrollment sheet, the trader will have two options of trade posts every week or every month as the case may be, if you want to change your direction, what you are doing, you just want to post, just tell us signals of what you want to post, we post. It’s only when it becomes effective that we can now start charging,” he said.
He called on traders to exchew ignorance and not to always see every good intention of Government as that has a hidden agenda but instead to cooperate with his Ministry so as to reap the benefits of the Digital Concept.
Dr. Ndukwe, who holds a Doctorate Degree in Digital Communication vowed to use his wealth of academic knowledge to ensure the realization of the E-commerce Department before the end of the year as part of his legacy to the Ministry of Trade and Investment, as according to him, those who did ICT on Marketing can have a place to work, a place to be employed and that way the Ministry can fully be digitalized.
