LEVERAGE INTERNET PENETRATION TO EXPAND E-COMMERCE MARKET

Sofea Azahar is Research Analyst at EMIR Research, a think tank focused on strategic policy recommendations based on rigorous research.

- SOFEA AZAHAR

The booming e-commerce market in Malaysia has been aided by the increasing number of Internet users and Internet access. Hence, the efforts to buttress e-commerce market should be continued, as one of the ways to sustain digital economy.

On average, Malaysians have been in the online community for 8.5 years since the implementation of the National Broadband Initiative in 2010. The population of Internet users in Malaysia rose from 81.2 per cent in 2018 to 84.2 per cent in 2019.

Malaysia has outperformed its Asean peers except for Singapore with 88.2 per cent of Internet user population – Vietnam (70.4 per cent), Philippines (60.1 per cent), Thailand (56.8 per cent) and Indonesia (39.8 per cent).

Even in 2016, research by the World Bank had shown that the people community in Malaysia has adopted technology in their daily lives quite well with an index score of 0.64 surpassing other Asean countries like Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia, as well as Asian economies namely China and India.

According to the latest statistics released by the Department of Statistics (DOSM), households’ access to Internet went up from 87 per cent in 2018 to 90.1 per cent in 2019. Access to computers decreased slightly from 71.7 per cent to 71.3 per cent while access to mobile phones remained high at 98.2 per cent with more access to smartphones – from 89 per cent to 91 per cent.