UNCTAD

Making E-Commerce and Digital Trade Work for Smaller Firms

Making E-Commerce and Digital Trade Work for Smaller Firms

The list of obstacles could go on.  The point is that the promise of selling globally comes with increasing challenges.  Hence the very good news that the World Trade Organization (WTO) has launched talks in Geneva to begin to create some global rules to sort out some of these issues.  For smaller firms, global rules can at least ensure that added expense and time becomes a necessary part of doing business, rather than an irritating element of doing business with some countries. The size of the “prize” is huge.  Estimates are all over the place on the current size of the digital economy, but Asia tends to lead the way.  An extremely useful series of reports just released by the Hinrich Foundation on eight economies in the region (five out now: Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia) shows how much additional trade might be gained from eliminating barriers to digital trade.