Singapore e-commerce market to expand to $7.46 bln by 2025 - Temasek report

Singapore is the most active country in the region in terms of venture capital and startup enterprises.

Singapore's e-commerce market is expected be worth $7.46 billion (US$5.4 billion) by 2025, a report prepared by Temasek and Google shows.

The report says e-commerce will account for 6.7 percent of all retail sales in Singapore in less than 10 years from now.

As of 2015 the e-commerce market in Singapore was valued at US$1 billion. Online shopping was made up 2.1 percent of retail sales, which was the highest proportion among all Southeast Asian countries surveyed.

The Google-Temasek survey covered countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

By 2025, Indonesia will have the highest e-commerce penetration in the region with an 8 percent retail sales market share.

Apart from this, the report also highlights the growth in ride-sharing services such as Grab and Uber. It notes that in 2015, the Singapore market would be valued at US$800 million, tying with Indonesia.

If the overall market is calculated then it shows that the region's ride-sharing market was worth US$2.5 billion in 2015, with the figure expected to exceed US$13 billion by 2025. The report also adds that Singapore will continue to record the highest fare per trip which is three times that of the average fare in Southeast Asia.

It also looked at the venture capital and startup landscape in Southeast Asia and reported that Singapore is the most active country with 37 percent of deal quantity and 72 percent of deal value as of 2015.

The activity was mainly driven by two startups, Grab and Property Guru, which recorded investments of about US$350 million and US$130 million, respectively.

The report also states that Southeast Asia is the world's fastest growing Internet region with an existing Internet user base of 260 million. This ratio is expected to grow up to 480 million users by 2020.

Consequently, the entire Internet economy in the Southeast Asia is expected to exceed US$200 billion by 2025 which will be driven mostly by the growth of the e-commerce market, followed by online media and online travel, the report said.

The report also says there are three unique factors which are driving growth in this region - young population with 70 percent under the age of 40, lack of big-box retail and a rapidly growing middle-class.

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