Digital Economy & E-Commerce

The government has led the charge in digitizing payments, resulting in a shift in government salaries, benefits, and subsidies towards digital payments. 100% of wage payments to employees are now digitized, up from 36% in 2016. Digitization of social safety net and wage payments for ready-made garment (RMG) workers led to the largest adoption of electronic payments. As of 2021, 12% of import and excise duty payments have been digitized, and 18% of B2B and 15% of person-to-government utility bill payments were made digitally. P2P payments using mobile financial services increased by 69% from FY 2018-19 to FY 2019-20. The use of formal channels for international remittances has grown from 11% in 2016 to 24% in 2021.

And the e-commerce market in the nation has grown dramatically in its inception period,  reaching US$2 billion in 2021, and is projected to reach US$3 billion by the end of 2023. When COVID-19 lockdowns were implemented nationwide, e-commerce witnessed a natural surge. Digital technology is now seeing a stratospheric increase in utilization, and the trend is expected to last into the future.