Vietnam takes lead in internet economy in SEA: Report

Illustrative image (Photo: weforum.org)

Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam takes the lead and set to post a 31% growth in gross merchandise value (GMV) from 23 billion USD in 2022 to 49 billion USD in 2025, according to the "e-Conomy SEA 2022" report released by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company on October 27.

The report said South East Asia’s top digital economies grew faster than expected in 2022 and is set to reach 200 billion USD in total value of transactions made this year.

The six major economies covered in the report, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, will achieve the milestone of 200 billion USD by 2025 which is three years earlier than schedule.

The 2022 GMV rose by about 20% from 161 billion USD in 2021. “After years of acceleration, digital adoption growth is normalising,” said the report.

Southeast Asia continues to see growth in the number of internet users, with 20 million new users added in 2022, raising the total number of users to 460 million.

However, that growth is starting to slow, and was just 4% in 2022 compared to a year ago. That’s compared to a 10% year-on-year increase in 2021 and 11% growth in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Southeast Asia’s online economy is still on track to reach 1 trillion USD by 2030 as online shopping becomes the norm, according to the report.

“E-commerce continues to accelerate, food delivery and online media are returning to pre-pandemic growth levels, while travel and transport recovery to pre-COVID levels will take time,” the report said.

Another growth driver, digital financial services, which includes payments, remittances, lending, investments and insurance, have seen healthy growth from 2021 to 2022, thanks to offline-to-online behavior shifts post-pandemic, wrote the report.

Among these services, insurance recorded the highest, growing 31% year-on-year while lending grew 25% year-on-year.

All the six countries are set to post double-digit growth in GMV from 2022 to 2025. Overall, their Internet economy is predicted to reach 330 billion USD by 2025 if companies put a greater focus on profitability for the next three years./.