The government will help local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enter the e-commerce industry in an attempt to boost economic growth.

Sri Agustina, the Trade Ministry’s director general for domestic trade, said on Thursday that the ministry had teamed up with the Indonesia E-commerce Association (IDEA) to train 1,000 SMEs in e-commerce practices.

“Since our economy has entered the digital era, Indonesia should support SME potential through good regulations on e-commerce,” she said in a discussion in Jakarta.

The training will serve to prepare local businesses to compete in the digital era.

“As merchants, they should be aware of how to conduct e-commerce properly,” she said.

Sri said the ministry was working on draft regulations on e-commerce that would require SMEs to register their business and regulate payment methods and product presentation and distribution.

Achmad Zaky, chief executive officer of the online marketplace bukalapak.com, said that e-commerce brought with it many incentives for developing countries, particularly for SMEs.

“SMEs that use the internet to market their products grow twice as much as those that don’t,” he said.

Zaky urged the government to be careful in drafting the regulations to make sure that they supported the competitiveness of local e-commerce ventures. Supportive regulations, he said, would help local businesses compete in the global market over the next 10 years.

IDEA predicts that Indonesia’s e-commerce industry will be worth Rp 295 trillion (US$20.7 billion) by 2016, triple the Rp 94.5 trillion recorded in 2013.

E-commerce businesses currently contribute $4.2 trillion to the world’s economy and 4.1 percent from the total GDP of the G20 countries, according to global consulting firm McKinsey.

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