2022 China-ASEAN E-commerce Development Report

In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated the enthusiasm for online shopping around the world. The ASEAN region has ushered in a climax of e-commerce development and is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. According to eMarketer statistics, the overall ASEAN e-commerce market grew by 35.2% in 2020, and the slowest growing country reached 28%. The growth rate slowed down in 2021 as the epidemic situation improved, but it still maintained a high growth rate of 26.1%. In 2021, the total online retail sales of ASEAN countries reached US$74.36 billion, and it is expected to increase by 20.6% in 2022 to US$89.67 billion.

As of the end of June 2022, among the ten countries with the fastest growing online retail sales in the world, Singapore ranked first in the world with a growth rate of 36.0%, and Indonesia and the Philippines ranked second and third with growth rates of 34.0% and 25.9% respectively.

Affected by various factors, the performance of e-commerce in ASEAN countries varies greatly. Benefiting from its large population base and user groups, Indonesia accounts for nearly half of the ASEAN e-commerce market share. In 2021, Indonesia's online retail sales were US$20.21 billion, an increase of 15% over 2020. Limited by fragmented geographical factors, the logistics and distribution system in the Philippines is relatively underdeveloped, and the scale of e-commerce is relatively small, only US$1.76 billion in 2021, but the growth rate reached 20%. Singapore's e-commerce scale is relatively small, but with its high per capita income, it has performed well among many ASEAN countries. In 2021, online retail sales reached US$3.47 billion, a year-on-year increase of 7%.

ASEAN is one of the regions with the lowest e-commerce market share in the world, with huge room for growth. First, traditional retail still occupies an absolute dominant position. Report1 shows that in 2021, the six major economies of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines generated a total retail sales of US$970.83 billion, of which only US$45.07 billion was generated through e-commerce transactions, accounting for 4.6% of total retail sales. Second, there is a lot of room for improvement in the penetration rate of online shopping. According to Google's "2021 Southeast Asia Digital Economy Report", ASEAN countries added 40 million Internet users in 2021, and the Internet penetration rate increased to 75%; about 80% of ASEAN Internet users have had at least one online shopping experience, and there is a trend of continued improvement.