The COVID-19 pandemic and containment measures have strongly impacted many member countries of the Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC), altering the activities and business models of companies, especially micro, small, and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs), and shopping habits. In this context, electronic and digital commerce showed unprecedented growth as businesses and consumers turned to digital channels to maintain their activities. Important bottlenecks in Latin America and some East Asian countries, however, have restricted the push towards digital trade in general and the participation of MSMEs in particular.
In this context, a new FEALAC project will respond to some urgent need for governments -with support from ECLAC and ESCAP- to step up their assistance to businesses, in particular MSMEs, to reap the benefits from the rapidly growing domestic and international e-commerce markets. Given these organizations’ expertise, this assistance focuses on three areas that represent major challenges for cross-border e-commerce in the FEALAC economies:
- The lack of timely data to monitor trends in both domestic and international e-commerce marketplaces. To better assess the supply and demand of domestic and cross-regional e-commerce, it would also be useful to strengthen the technical capacity of national statistical offices in selected countries to collect domestic and cross-border e-commerce data.
- Regulations potentially affecting cross-border e-commerce. In collaboration with OECD and the European University Institute (EIU), ECLAC and ESCAP have collected and analyzed data on 22 Asia-Pacific and 13 Latin American economies. The expansion of the regulatory analysis to cover more countries both in East Asia and Latin America as well as deepening the analysis on e-commerce regulations would allow stakeholders in FEALAC member countries to better understand the digital-trade regulatory environment in their own- and partner economies. It could help governments to design effective policies and actions to assist domestic firms, MSMEs in particular, to fully utilize opportunities created by digital technology and e-commerce.
- Factors that limit the MSMEs’ participation in cross border e-commerce. ECLAC and ESCAP have been monitoring several policy initiatives related to promoting the participation of MSMEs in e-commerce. Most initiatives seem to focus on the home market. Only few strategies were identified that targeted digital exporters or women digital entrepreneurs. A more complete inventory and analysis of these policy initiatives would allow FEALAC countries to better benchmark their own initiatives to those of their peers and fill in possible gaps in their support system.
2. Goals and target audience
This meeting aims to receive guidance on the implementation of ECLACESCAP’s FEALAC project on the MSMEs participation in cross-border goods and services e-commerce in Latin America. The target audience is experts and representatives from Ministries in charge of trade, economy and MSMEs in FEALAC member countries.
3. Structure
This two-hours webinar has two sessions. The first session discusses the project components related to evidence-based e-commerce policymaking. Experts will be invited to share experience on collecting preliminary evidence on trends in domestic and cross-border e-commerce using data on visitor traffic and marketplace characteristics.. The second session focuses on the project components aiming to enhance the supportive regulatory environment to promote the opportunities of MSMEs in e-commerce. Experts will share experience on the methodology to measure regulations on cross-border e-commerce and digital trade in goods and services in both regions; and review strategies for business process analysis applied to MSMEs in E-commerce.
