This report is part of a broader work program on shaping a more positive narrative on regional integration in South Asia. It is a follow-up to a recent flagship report published by the South Asia Region of the World Bank, A Glass Half Full: The Promise of Regional Trade in South Asia. E-commerce is dramatically changing the way goods and services are transacted nationally, regionally, and globally. It facilitates international trade by reducing the cost of distance and remoteness and can be more inclusive of underrepresented groups such as women, small businesses, and rural entrepreneurs. Intraregional trade in South Asia is still below its potential, and the region lags behind other parts of the world in activating the potential benefits from e-commerce. Adopting a novel yet practical approach, this report explores how e-commerce can be boosted to deepen intraregional trade in South Asia. It examines the main transacting models in the digital space and the channels through which e-commerce helps reduce transactions costs for firms and consumers. It considers the regulations, as well as the regulatory gaps, affecting private sector participation in e-commerce, focusing on data privacy, consumer protection, delivery, cybersecurity, market-access regulations, and digital payments. Finally, the report presents recommendations for regulatory reforms that could enhance e-trade, especially in a regional context and as a possible platform for greater global engagement by South Asian firms. The scale of these recommendations ranges from the modest, such as allowing cross-border payments and streamlining the customs regime, to the more ambitious, such as allowing the operation of regional e-commerce platforms and liberalizing related cross-border logistics services.

South Asia region’s economies continue on a recovery path, with production and export having recovered to pre-COVID trend levels. But the recovery has been uneven across countries and sectors, and significant risks exist that could jeopardize short-term recovery and long-term growth. Over the short-term, low vaccination rates in most countries in the region make the population and economies vulnerable to future COVID waves and lockdowns; supply shortages due to global supply bottlenecks continue to put upward pressure on (food) inflation, especially after consumption recovers. Over the long-term, the region faces long-lasting scarring effects from the pandemic. The emergence of a new services economy creates an opportunity for the region to shift gears and to move towards a services-led development model. The importance of services has been increasing over time and got a further boost during the response to the COVID pandemic, when digital technologies became critical. This new services economy comprises not just the ICT sector, but also business and professional services that are increasingly critical inputs into manufacturing and other sectors, and digital platforms that are creating new markets. It can become the driver of development in South Asia because 1) Services are increasingly tradable and also represent a large part of value added incorporated in the exports of goods. 2) Services firms can drive productivity growth because of innovations that make their own products and other industries more efficient 3) The services sector also generates jobs and helps upgrading skills through on-the-job training. To unleash the potential of the new services economy, policy makers should rethink regulations and establish new institutions to enable 1) competition and innovation 2) increased labor mobility and up-skilling, through education and on-the job training; 3) the absorption of new services by firms and households. Governments in South Asia are addressing these new realities, but they face major challenges. With countries worldwide struggling to find an optimal institutional environment for the new services sectors, a good option for South Asia is to experiment with regulatory sandboxes.

This report analyzes e-commerce in Asia and the Pacific, assesses its environmental impact, and explains why providing adequate internet, online payments, and last-mile logistics is key to creating a sustainable and inclusive digital marketplace. Noting the region makes up the largest share of the world’s online retail market, it tracks the impact of the pandemic and emphasizes the need to level the playing field for small businesses. It outlines ways for companies to measure their carbon footprint, highlights the potential risk of anti-competitive behavior, and explains the need to improve digital taxation policies in line with e-commerce’s rapid growth.

South Asian leaders have made it a priority to tackle key regional issues such as poverty, environment degradation, trade and investment barriers and food insecurity, among others.

This publication assesses the impact of COVID-19 on e-commerce and digital trade. While the pandemic caused a sharp deceleration in economic activity, it also led to a rapid acceleration of e-commerce. With restrictions on movement and other public health interventions in place, digital solutions have become essential to continued delivery of economic and social activities. And, as the digital economy and e-commerce play an increased role in Sustainable Development, stakeholders at all levels have a responsibility to ensure that these technologies play a positive and powerful role in national and international recovery efforts. Indeed, those that can harness the potential of e-commerce will be better placed to benefit from global markets for their goods and services, while those that fail to do so risk falling behind. Thus, the critical global policy challenge that emerges from this study is that greater efforts are needed to help reduce inequalities in e-trade readiness that currently prevail amongst countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which is still impacting South Asia, has temporarily brought the region to a near standstill. Governments proactively stabilized activity through monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and supportive financial regulation, but the situation is fragile amid weak buffers and exhausted policy tools. South Asia’s GDP is expected to contract 7.7 percent this year, by far the largest decline on record, but uncertainty around the forecast is substantial. The informal economy in South Asia has been hit hard. Many unorganized workers, self-employed people and microenterprises have experienced a large drop in earnings as the service sectors that were affected most by the lockdowns are dominated by informality. Informal workers and firms tend to have inadequate mechanisms for coping with short-term demand and supply interruptions due to limited savings and constrained access to finance. While the poor have suffered severely during the crisis, many informal workers in the middle of the income distribution have experienced the greatest drop in earnings. Most of them are not covered by social insurance. The crisis lays bare complicated structural problems in the informal sector that need to be addressed.

The WEB of Transport Corridors in South Asia develops a holistic appraisal methodology to ensure that economic benefits of investments in transport corridors are amplified and more widely spread, and possible negative impacts such as congestion, environmental degradation, and other unintended consequences are minimized. It focuses on South Asia—not only as one of the world’s most populous and poorest regions—but as a hinge between East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The book is aimed at politicians, technocrats, civil society organizations, and businesses. It presents case studies of past and recent corridor initiatives, provides rigorous analysis of the literature on the spatial impact of corridors, and offers assessments of corridor investment projects supported by international development organizations. A series of spotlights examines such issues as private sector co-investment; the impacts of corridors on small enterprises and women; and issues with implementing cross-border corridors. The 'WEB' in the title stands for both the wider economic benefits (WEB) that transport corridors are expected to generate and the complex web of transport corridors that has been proposed. The appraisal methodology introduced in this book shows how the web of interconnected elements around corridors can be disentangled and the most promising corridor proposals—the ones with the greatest wider economic benefits—can be selected.