ISTANBUL

Turkey should focus on increasing e-export, of which volume reached $1.5 trillion globally, according to a digital communications expert on Monday.

Turkish SMEs can take share from the Asia-Pacific region, which is the leader in the e-export market with $381 billion, by concentrating on digitalization, Nabat Garakhanova, the head of a consultancy firm MEZO Digital, said in a press release.

Turkey's SMEs' digitalization rate is only 4% currently, she said.

Reminding Turkey's target of $10 billion e-commerce for 2023, she noted: "Turkey fell 3.5 years behind in the digitalization compared to other countries".

Some 57% of 7.5-billion-world-population -- or 4.4 billion people -- are internet users and their average internet use is around 6.5 hours, she added.

"The international trade is becoming easier and faster via the internet, people prefer e-commerce due to free-shipping, secure-payment, and return mechanism, and 2.8 billion people use e-commerce channels," she stressed.

Digitalization to fulfill SME export potential

The volume of the Turkish e-commerce market, which started in 2010, reached $6.7 billion annually, while e-export's share in e-commerce is only 10%, the expert said.

Turkey's SMEs, which constitute 90% of the country's economy, make 55% of Turkish exports, and their digitalization should be accelerated to fulfill their export potential.

"Their digitalization rate can be reached 20% by implementing the right strategy with the support of unions, chambers, and NGOs," she added.

She also noted that Turkish SMEs are weak in web site management and they make certain mistakes such as advertisings in wrong languages, offering payment and shipping options in wrong currencies, miscalculating customs taxes, and analytical errors.