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E-commerce contributes 0.75 percent to GDP
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A small shopping cart sits on top of a laptop keyboard to illustrate the ease of e-commerce. (Shutterstock/File)
T
he Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) has estimated that e-commerce contributes just 0.75 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Indef researcher Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara said based on data owned by Bank Indonesia, the amount of e-commerce transactions was Rp 75 trillion (US$5.25 billion) in 2016, including transactions in non-marketplaces.
With the assumption that e-commerce grows 17 percent annually, as it has done in the last 10 years, e-commerce transactions would reach Rp 102 trillion in 2018.
“The amount is small compared to GDP, which is at Rp 13.59 quadrillion”, said Bhima as reported by kontan.co.id. “It is only about 0.75 percent of GDP or 1.34 percent of total household consumption.”
However, he said e-commerce was important because it posed significant growth. Therefore, he added, the government needed to have accurate data about the digital economy – not only e-commerce, but also financial technology (fintech).
“Now its contribution is still small, but it will potentially make a large contribution in the future,” he said, adding that he supported the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), which was collecting data on e-commerce to provide decision makers with more accurate data. (bbn)
