SEEU Review vol. 6 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

SEEU Review Volume 6, No. 2, 2010The law for e-commerce lately voted in the Macedonian Parliament, issupposed to offer improved legislative support for Macedonian citizens aspossible buyers online. Besides the law is hypothetical to support potentialbusinesses that would like to sell their goods and services via the web.Regardless of the reality that banks in Macedonia offer Internet bankingor PC banking services, the suitable legislation was absent and people werefrightened on using PCs and in general e-payment instruments online. Bankswere amplification that buying online with their cards is clients’ only theirresponsibility, so the bank cannot give any guaranties.In the e-marketplace purchasing is called e-procurement and is the mostcritical part of the supply chain for all organizations. The process of e-procurement involves some steps, the first one is searching- the ability foronline search for suppliers, contacts etc. The second one is qualifying- theability to make online research for the backgrounds of companies, theircredit history and to compare them. Another part is negotiation- that meansto negotiate about the price, quality, timing, etc. Finally comes the actualprocess of purchasing in which are included to order the product, invoicingis the part when the company receives the invoice and enter the informationabout financial and production. After that comes shipping of the good, and atleast remittance payment in which the company sends the payment and enterthe record in the system.The B2B model is most used because it reduced costs and that’s veryimportant for small and mid-size companies in Macedonia. Macedonia canbe found in most of the B2B portal but offering just a small amount ofproducts or services, and it is significant that present are just biggercompanies that are bigger and can offer more products, while the small andmidsized companies are still uncertain about their electronic transactions andthat’s also the reason why they do not appear on B2B portals.For instance, in alibaba.com we can find 33 entries for Macedonianproducts,the categories are marble(8), chocolate(1), steel products(2),mineral water (1), fresh apples (2), new cars (1), healthcare supplement(2),sliced herbal medicine (1), telecommunication tower, fresh peaches, rice andwine.The chamber of commerce of Republic of Macedonia(www.mchamber.org.mk) is offering a so called “light version” of e-marketplace with simple listing of Supply and demand by companies fromMacedonia and international companies interested in doing business inMacedonia. This portal is a good option for companies to minimally107