Policymakers gain new tool

SINGAPORE: Policymakers in Asia grappling with how to measure the growth of e-commerce just scored one more tool.

The Singapore Department of Statistics has started publishing the proportion of the city state’s retail sales that were transacted online.

In February, those purchases made up 3.9 per cent of overall retail sales, or S$144.3 million (RM424.6 million), compared with 4.1 per cent in the prior month, said the agency recently.

Central banks and statistics agencies across Asia have been hiring armies of number-crunchers to explore how consumers’ shopping habits are affecting inflation.

In Southeast Asia specifically, online shopping is set to explode in the six biggest economies to US$64.8 billion in 2021 from US$37.7 billion last year, according to BMI Research.

A February report from Maybank Kim Eng Research Pte Ltd estimated Singapore’s online share of total retail sales at 5.4 per cent, the highest among Southeast Asia’s five top economies.

Malaysia was second, at 2.7 per cent.

For a sale to be counted as online, the Singapore Department of Statistics said it verified that an order and sale were conducted through a company’s website, third-party website, mobile application, extranet or Electronic Data Interchange.

Payment may or may not have been made digitally.