Chamber of Commerce to launch national retail database

The Polish Chamber of Commerce (PIH) is creating an electronic business to business (B2B) platform called Mercury for the country's retail trade companies. According to Andrzej Lewinski, president of PIH, the only chance for such companies to survive in competition with big foreign supermarkets is consolidation, which would be made possible thanks to this platform. It is probable that chemical-sector company Ciech will become the main investor in the project. "The plan is that Ciech gets a 57% stake in the platform. Their participation in the consolidation of retail trade could give them new opportunities. It would let the company expand into fields other than the chemicals sector, for example to start distributing cosmetics on eastern markets," said Lewinski, who is also one of Ciech's directors. He believes that in 2-3 years, Mercury could have about 50,000 clients for the B2B formula and record turnovers of zl. 3 billion to zl. 4 billion a year. "To be realistic, we count on 20% of that sum in 2003," said Lewinski. The first transactions should start by the end of this year. (Puls Biznesu, pp. 1, 5) A.D.