Economic Research Forum (ERF)

Why isn’t e-commerce benefiting the Arab world?

1147
Although headline measures of digitalisation and e-commerce are growing steadily in the Middle East and North Africa, the outlook is anything but rosy. As this Project Syndicate column explains, not only is internet access largely limited to those with higher incomes, but the bulk of the goods and services being traded comes from foreign suppliers.

In a nutshell

To benefit from greater exposure to international trade via digital platforms, a country still needs to have a comparative advantage in certain industrial sectors, as well as widespread access to advanced digital infrastructure; MENA countries lack one or both.

Arab countries produce very few intermediate products for export and are poorly integrated in global value chains: such weaknesses reduce the opportunities for domestic businesses to benefit from digital trade and e-commerce.

Part of the solution is to address the infrastructure constraints facing small businesses in the region: these range from access to reliable electricity supplies to electronic payment systems and affordable high-speed internet services.

For centuries, the streets of Cairo have been festooned with traditional lanterns to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan. In recent decades, the domestically produced lanterns were replaced by cheaper ones made in China. Yet owing to the pandemic’s disruption of global supply chains, Egyptian-made lanterns made a comeback last year. But whether their revival will last remains to be seen.

The Egyptian lantern story is just one pixel in a much larger picture. Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), new technologies are increasingly facilitating trade within the region and between local markets and the rest of the world. Digital platforms like Alibaba, eBay and Amazon have expanded the range of goods and services that can be exchanged across borders. Digitalisation has not only increased the scale, scope and speed of commerce; it has also changed the way businesses trade across borders and allocate resources.

Successful local e-commerce platforms are usually a source of pride. But, though digital platforms provide consumers with a greater variety of goods and services and allow businesses to trade internationally with greater efficiency, they also subject local businesses to tough, and sometimes unfair, competition.

The MENA region’s experience shows that the introduction of digital trade and e-commerce can have complex implications for a developing country’s economy. To benefit from greater exposure to international trade via digital platforms, a country still needs to have a comparative advantage in certain industrial sectors, as well as widespread access to advanced digital infrastructure. MENA countries lack one or both.

Most Arab countries trade primarily in fossil fuels (accounting for 56% of the region’s total exports) and other natural and primary resources, which tend to be less positively affected by the rise of digital markets. Arab countries also produce very few intermediate products for export, and thus are poorly integrated in global value chains. Such weaknesses reduce the opportunities for domestic businesses to benefit from digital trade and e-commerce. No wonder some 80% of e-commerce in the region is concentrated in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Egypt.

To be sure, Arab consumers do benefit from digital markets, and the Arab consumer base is digitalising rapidly. Between 2012 and 2017, the share of digital media users in the region increased from less than 10% to more than 30%, and this trend has since accelerated with the pandemic.

But this rapid spike in digital adoption was mostly driven by smartphones with faster internet speeds, predominantly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, which together account for 60% of the region’s e-commerce market. The situation is quite different in poorer countries outside the oil-rich Gulf states. According to a recent World Bank report, Tunisians in the bottom 40% of the income distribution would need to spend more than 40% of their income to purchase high-speed internet. And Tunisia is not alone. Over 60% of people in Algeria, Djibouti, Morocco, Syria and Yemen cannot afford fixed or mobile broadband services.

So far, the benefits of expanded e-commerce have been captured primarily by large GCC-based retailers, their foreign partners and higher-income cohorts. And these retailers have been expanding their markets with new product selections, both organically and through partnerships. For example, Souq, a UAE-based digital platform that was acquired by Amazon, and Noon, a digital market operated in partnership with eBay, have brought millions of new consumer goods to the MENA market with localised websites, product selections and payment methods.

The bulk of the wares sold on these platforms, however, comes from overseas sellers, mostly in China. According to the Chinese Trade Ministry, China’s exports to Egypt in 2020 totalled $13.6 billion, an 11.8% increase from the previous year, whereas imports from Egypt to China stood at $920 million, having fallen by 7.8%. In this respect, the overall impact of digital markets, particularly ‘aggregators’ like Amazon and Alibaba, on Arab states appears to be more negative than positive.

There are some exceptions. Domestic firms in transport, real estate services, tourism and entertainment have all been able to leverage digital platforms to their advantage. In the case of tourism, for example, hotels and tour operators have benefited from the arrival of international online travel booking agencies and search engines like Wego (Singapore) and Cleartrip (India), along with homegrown brands such as Almosafer (Saudi Arabia) and Rehlat (Kuwait).

Similarly, digital platforms have given a boost to the region’s entertainment business. For example, Anghami, a music-streaming platform founded in 2012 in Lebanon, is now a Nasdaq-listed company serving more than 75 million consumers. And Netflix has both tapped into and promoted local content, including its first Arabic-language original series. This has vastly expanded the industry’s reach. Lebanese director Lucien Bourjeily’s 2017 film, Heaven Without People, was little known until it became available on Netflix and shot to fame.

Still, these are the exceptions that prove the rule. While the Arab consumer base is digitalising fast, most of the productive base is not keeping pace. As a result, an increasing number of businesses in the region are losing their customers to foreign suppliers and service providers. This trend is unsustainable, because the local businesses that employ Arab consumers will eventually find themselves driven out of business.

Part of the solution is to address the infrastructure constraints facing small businesses in the region. These range from access to reliable electricity supplies to electronic payment systems and affordable high-speed internet services. But governments must not stop there. They will need to work closely with local and international market players to ensure that the new digital trade with the world goes both ways.

 

This article was originally published by Project Syndicate. Read the original article.

Most read

EU climate policy: potential effects on the exports of Arab countries

The carbon border adjustment mechanism aims to ensure that Europe’s green objectives are not undermined by the relocation of production to parts of the world with less ambitious climate policies – but it could impose substantial costs on developing countries that export to the European Union. This column examines the potential impact on exporters in the Arab world – and outlines possible policy responses that could mitigate the economic damage.

Financial development, corruption and informality in MENA

Reducing the extent of informality in the Middle East and North Africa would help to promote economic growth. This column reports evidence on how corruption and financial development influence the size of the informal economy in countries across the region. The efficiency of the financial sector in MENA economies reduces the corruption incentive for firms to seek to join and stay in the formal sector.

Green hydrogen production and exports: could MENA countries lead the way?

The Arab region stands at the threshold of a transformative opportunity to become a global leader in green hydrogen production and exports. But as this column explains, achieving this potential will require substantial investments, robust policy frameworks and a commitment to technological innovation.

Climate change threats and how the Arab countries should respond

The Arab region is highly vulnerable to extreme events caused by climate change. This column outlines the threats and explores what can be done to ward off disaster, not least moving away from the extraction of fossil fuels and taking advantage of the opportunities in renewable energy generation. This would both mitigate the potential for further environmental damage and act as a catalyst for more and better jobs, higher incomes and improved social outcomes.

Child stunting in Tunisia: an alarming rise

Child stunting in Tunisia seemed to have fallen significantly over the past two decades. But as this column reports, new analysis indicates that the positive trend has now gone dramatically into reverse. Indeed, the evidence is unequivocal: the nutritional health of the country’s youngest citizens is rapidly deteriorating and requires immediate and decisive action.

Freedom: the missing piece in analysis of multidimensional wellbeing

Political philosophy has long emphasised the importance of freedom in shaping a meaningful life, yet it is consistently overlooked in assessments of human wellbeing across multiple dimensions. This column focuses on the freedom to express opinions, noting that it is shaped by both formal laws and informal social dynamics, fluctuating with the changing cultural context, particularly in the age of social media. Data on public opinion in Arab countries over the past decade are revealing about how this key freedom is perceived.

Exchange rate undervaluation: the impact on participation in world trade

Can currency undervaluation influence participation in world trade through global value chains (GVC)? This column reports new evidence on the positive impact of an undervalued real exchange rate on the involvement of a country’s firms in GVCs. Undervaluation acts as an economy-wide industrial policy, supporting the competitiveness of national exports in foreign markets vis-à-vis those of other countries.

New horizons for economic transformation in the GCC countries

The countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have historically relied on hydrocarbons for economic growth. As this column explains ahead of a high-level ERF policy seminar in Dubai, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain and robotics – what some call the fourth industrial revolution – present a unique opportunity for the region to reduce its dependence on oil and make the transition to a knowledge-based economy.

Shifting public trust in governments across the Arab world

The Arab Spring, which began over a decade ago, was driven by popular distrust in governments of the region. The column reports on how public trust has shifted since then, drawing on survey data collected soon after the uprising and ten years later. The findings reveal a dynamic and often fragile landscape of trust in Arab governments from the early 2010s to the early 2020s. Growing distrust across many countries should raise concerns about future political and social instability.

Corruption in Iran: the role of oil rents

How do fluctuations in oil rents influence levels of corruption in Iran? This column reports the findings of new research, which examines the impact of increases in the country’s oil revenues on corruption, including the mechanisms through which the effects occur – higher inflation, greater public spending on the military and the weakness of democratic institutions.




LinkedIn