By Aloysious Kasoma
Jumia, one of Uganda’s leading E-Commerce players has spoken out on the infamous social media tax, describing the future as “uncertain”.
Sefic Bagdadioglu, Jumia Regional Director can’t paint a rosy picture about the future progress of the online business shopping in Uganda considering the OTT tax commonly known as social media tax.
Speaking at an event to commemorate six years of online revolution in Africa at the Ware House located in Street Industrial Area, Kampala this week, Bagdadioglu said: “It is too early to comment because we all know that the tax is relatively new.
The obstacle put down of course slowsdown the progress slightly for us and our customers. However, we are bound by the rules and regulations in the countries we’re operating and we try to see what we can do to improve the lives our customers.”
He said that the company takes advantage of the technology advancement and statistically, they are analyzing the impact of social media tax by observing the trends closely.
“Once we have the better understanding of the impact, we are going to do whatever we can such that the end user or our customer is not much affected,” he added.
He said that in situations like this, people behavior changes and may find alternatives to stay online but if they finally don’t appreciate the mobile money tax, they may adopt a cash economy which makes things slower and inconveniencing.
Uganda is still one of the least countries in Africa in as far as e-commerce is concerned.
Jumia which is still investing in Uganda has given priority to
Kampala and Entebbe for their trade mark services in food and retail.
“Uganda is one of the emerging markets and we are still at the investment stages and we hope to hit the sale of 200,000 items on Jumia website daily like in Kenya,” Bagdadioglu said.
About 8 million packages were handled through the Jumia logistic platform in 2017.
