IN his Talk to the People program on national television last Monday, President Rodrigo Duterte told the public that they should refrain from patronizing online sellers of various merchandise and services because there are many scammers using the internet to victimize people.
The President stressed that online scammers posing as sellers should be imprisoned, adding that Filipinos should avoid buying online for now.
Duterte said: “I am advising the Filipinos, lay off muna kayo diyan sa online-online.
Maraming tulisan diyan (There are a lot of bandits there). Their imagination can really go wild and think of a violation that is really panloloko sa tao.”
Various scams and con games have been perpetrated online, both by buyers and sellers of products, but this is the first time that the Chief Executive took the time to notice them. The reason is because, according to him, there is now a proliferation of sellers of fake medicines, using the internet to do serious fraud and gain access to their victims’ wallets.
‘These figures, by their sheer volume, will most likely overwhelm Duterte’s heads-up that Filipinos should lay off from using online business transactions.’
The problem of online fraud in business transactions became evident when the COVID-19 disease became a pandemic in 2020 and people worldwide had to stay at home during a series of lockdowns. To many, their only connectivity to the outside world is the internet, and e-commerce in the Philippines made a quantum leap, now being touted to hit P495 million over the next five years.
Studies have shown that the online business in the Philippines would likely increase at a strong annual rate of 17 percent over a five-year period. E-commerce transactions are expected to reach nearly P495 billion ($10.3 billion) by 2025 from the P229.8 billion ($4.8 billion) in 2020. While data is still being gathered, we can safely say that last year alone, e-commerce transactions grew close to 15 percent to reach P264.5 billion ($5.5 billion).
These figures, by their sheer volume, will most likely overwhelm Duterte’s heads-up that Filipinos should lay off from using online business transactions. The presidential advice should be “caveat emptor,” or buyer beware. Everyone must do the routine due diligence before entering into a transaction.
Duterte said pursuing and arresting online criminals might be “better off” led by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) or the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG). Arrests should be followed up by prosecution, by filing the proper cases in court and seeing through that the judicial process is used to punish the guilty and help the aggrieved consumers.
The antidote is strong law enforcement, Mr. President, and not a boycott of e-commerce.