This initiative supports work towards a global system of digital trade that ensures equal opportunities for businesses of all sizes and geographies. The current landscape of fragmented digital trade regulations and financing disparities hinders many small and medium- sized firms from fully leveraging the benefits of e-commerce beyond their own home market.
To address this, the initiative focuses on three key areas:
(1) Promoting regulatory harmonization;
(2) Bridging gaps in digital infrastructure and trade finance; and
(3) Supporting secure, interoperable cross-border online payment systems.
A number of projects currently form the backbone of our work on Digital Trade
1) Digital Economy Agreement Leadership (DEAL) Community and Workstream, which seeks to promote interoperability of regulatory regimes by convening major actors and stakeholders in a number of ongoing and recently concluded digital economy agreements (DEAs) and digital trade rulemaking fora (e.g. AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, WTO JSI E-Commerce negotiations), together with private-sector representatives, officials from IGOs, and recognized experts on the global digital economy, to share and promote best practices and favorable outcomes.
2) ASEAN Digital Economy Agreement Leadership (DEAL) Project, which is actively supporting the negotiation of the ongoing Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) negotiations within ASEAN. This project, funded by the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund (AKCF) is supporting these negotiations through a three-pronged strategy, namely: (1) by standing up and maintaining an online interactive repository of previous and existing negotiating outcomes on issues that are also being addressed in the DEFA to help negotiators agree on text and language that is broadly aligned with existing norms and standards; (2) conducting and disseminating the results of a cross-ASEAN business survey of MSMEs on the digital economy to better inform negotiators on the needs, priorities and preferences of their own MSMEs, thereby making the ultimate negotiated outcomes more responsive to the needs of local and regional business; (3) providing capacity building to the ASEAN DEFA negotiators and ASEAN Secretariat personnel on issues currently being negotiated to better sensitize them as to existing outcomes in other fora, best practices and the most desirable outcomes from the perspective of regional and international businesses.
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3) Five Pillars Alliance to Achieve a Level Playing Field for Global Digital Trade. This initiative is directed at tackling longstanding pain points and gaps across five areas that are crucial to making the benefits of digital trade accessible to MSMEs in both developed and developing countries, namely: (1) policy, (2) connectivity, (3) finance, (4) logistics, and (5) skills. The Alliance convenes a high-level Advisory Board comprising representatives from government and intergovernmental organizations, as well as C-suite executives from the key industry verticals that form the backbone of the connectivity, finance, logistics and skills spaces. The Advisory Board identifies gaps and sets targets and timeframes for bridging these gaps. The main work of delivering on the Alliance's agenda is taken up by our Community of Champions, comprising representatives and experts from the worlds of policy and private sector firms active in the different areas in which the Alliance works. The Alliance measures its impact over time in terms of the ease of doing business in the digital economy for MSMEs and the barriers/costs that these firms must face in each of the identified pillars.
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