Illustrative image (Source: Internet) HCMCity (VNA) - Vietnam’s digital economy is expected to reach 14 billionUSD in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 16 percent, and will likely reach 52billion USD in 2025, re-accelerating to nearly 29 percent in compound annualgrowth rate, according to a report fromGoogle, Temasek and Bain & Company.
According to thereport, In Vietnam, with its various stages of social distancing, users turnedto the internet for solutions to their sudden challenges. A significantnumber tried new digital services: 41 percent of all digital service consumerswere new (higher than the SEA average), with 94 percent of these new consumersintending to continue their behaviour post-pandemic.
E-commerce has driven significant growth in the country, at 46 percent,alongside strong growth across most sectors, except for travel, it said.
The report also said that SoutheastAsia’s digital economy remains resilient at 100 billion USD in grossmerchandise value (GMV) despite headwinds and is on track to cross 300billion USD in GMV by 2025.
Indonesia and Vietnamcontinued to grow at double-digit rates, and Singapore remains a regionalenabler for growth, despite short term GMV decline due to the online travelsector.
The report, which covered Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand andthe Philippines, showed that Internet usage in the region continues tomultiply, with 40 million new users this year alone. That pushed the totalnumber of internet users in these Southeast Asian countries to 400million or nearly 70 percent of the population.
The coronavirus brought about a permanent and massive digital adoptionspurt, with more than one in three digital service consumers (36 percentof total) new to the service. Of the number, 90 percent intend tocontinue their newfound habits post-pandemic, it said.
Many of the new users came from non-metropolitan areas in Malaysia, Indonesiaand the Philippines.
The report looked at seven internet economy sectors in SoutheastAsia, including e-commerce, transport and food delivery, online travel,online media, financial services, health technology and education technology,with health and education technology added to the 2020 version.
E-commerce is expected to grow by 63 percent to 62 billion USD in 2020 andis poised to hit 172 billion USD in 2025.
Digital financial services are also gaining momentum as moresmall-and-medium-sized businesses have become receptive to accepting onlinepayments. Digital payments are set to grow from 600 billion USD in 2019 to 620billion USD in 2020 and could reach 1.2 trillion USD by 2025.
The health technology and education technology sectors received a boostfrom the pandemic as many people turned to online health consultations whileschools shifted to remote learning. Investments in those sectors aregrowing.
Online travel andtransport sectors were hit the hardest as the pandemic ground internationaltravel to a halt while many people began to work from home or became concernedabout sharing transport. Still, the report predicted online travel torebound to 60 billion USD by 2025./.
VNA
