Viet Nam takes the lead and is set to post a 31 per cent growth in gross merchandise value (GMV) from US$23 billion in 2022 to $49 billion in 2025, according to the "e-Conomy SEA 2022" report released by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company on Thursday.

The report said Southeast Asia’s top digital economies grew faster than expected in 2022 and are set to reach $200 billion in the total value of transactions made this year.

The six major economies covered in the report, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam, will achieve the milestone of $200 billion by 2022 which is three years earlier than scheduled.

The 2022 GMV rose by about 20 per cent from $161 billion in 2021. “After years of acceleration, digital adoption growth is normalising,” said the report.

Southeast Asia continues to see growth in the number of internet users, with 20 million new users added in 2022, raising the total number of users to 460 million.

However, that growth is starting to slow, and was just 4 per cent in 2022 compared to a year ago. That’s compared to a 10 per cent year-on-year increase in 2021 and 11 per cent growth in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Southeast Asia’s online economy is still on track to reach $1 trillion by 2030 as online shopping becomes the norm, according to the report.

“E-commerce continues to accelerate, food delivery and online media are returning to pre-pandemic growth levels, while travel and transport recovery to pre-COVID levels will take time,” the report said.

Another growth driver, digital financial services, which includes payments, remittances, lending, investments and insurance, have seen healthy growth from 2021 to 2022, thanks to offline-to-online behaviour shifts post-pandemic, wrote the report.

Among these services, insurance recorded the highest, growing 31 per cent year-on-year while lending grew 25 per cent year-on-year.

All six countries are set to post double-digit growth in GMV from 2022 to 2025. Overall, their Internet economy is predicted to reach $330 billion by 2025 if companies put a greater focus on profitability for the next three years. — VNS