Farmers and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the Philippines are being urged to sign-up for Deliver-E, an integrated end-to-end e-commerce platform for agricultural and food products recently launched by the country’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
Philippine New Agency (PNA) reports the platform was developed in partnership with the Philippine’s Department of Agriculture, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), farmer cooperatives, and private sector partners.
DTI secretary, Ramon Lopez, said the main goal of the project is to increase the Phiippine’s food production and to ensure supply stability for basic necessities and prime commodities through new business models.
Lopez explained that Deliver-E will help MSMEs, farmers, and farmers’ cooperatives sell their products directly to consumers. By doing so it can increase the income of farmers by cutting intermediaries or “middlemen” that can lower the prices of agricultural goods in the market.
Deliver-E also aims to develop efficient transport and logistics systems for agricultural products, provide MSMEs supply affordable and quality agricultural products, and create a dashboard that will enable the government to gather and analyse real-time data to aid policy making.
The platform was developed by InsightSCS and was initially designed to help farmers from the Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, and Bicol iduring the height of the pandemic, when the supply chain was heavily impacted by restrictions.
USAID Philippines acting mission director Patrick Wesner announced during the virtual launch that USAID has also allocated close to PHP20m (US$416,163) worth of grants to further improve the capacity and efficiency of the Deliver-E.
“Since its pilot in April 2020, farmers from Luzon and a number of provinces in Mindanao sold around 500 tonnes of fresh fruits and vegetables worth PHP7.2m (US$148,818) to 35,000 buyers in Metro Manila and nearby provinces,” said Wesner.
There are currently two farmer cooperatives, 600 farmers, and seven MSMEs that went on board of the e-commerce platform.
PNA has indicated Deliver-E is aiming to involve at least 25 farmer cooperatives, 12,500 farmer beneficiaries, and 100 MSMEs by 2021.
