KUALA LUMPUR (April 18): ASEAN e-commerce will progress from its infancy to a more mature stage, and by 2025, online shopping in ASEAN is expected to be worth US$172 billion, or 2.8 times what it was in 2020.

Citing ResearchAndMarkets.com’s "ASEAN Warehousing and Distribution Logistics Market- Growth, Trends, Covid-19 Impact, And Forecasts (2022 - 2027)" report last Friday (April 15), BusinessWire said that in 2020, ASEAN had added 40 million additional Internet users, bringing the total number of Internet users to 70% of the region's population.

The report said ASEAN has a huge young population, and its high GDP growth has quickly expanded the middle class, which is good news for the region's retail sector, which is expected to grow at a 5% annual rate through 2025.

It said consumers are beginning to buy higher-priced things online with a far higher level of trust as the e-commerce business matures.

Meanwhile, the report said Malaysia's industrial market has been steadily growing in recent years, owing to greater e-commerce penetration rates, which have resulted in increased storage space requirements to accommodate the surge in last-mile delivery as well as the structural move towards omnichannel retailing.

It said international retailers are progressively developing warehouses in Malaysia to increase delivery times, customer service, and product availability. IKEA, Nestle, Tesco, Zalora, and Lazada are among the global firms investing in Malaysian distribution hubs to grow their e-commerce footprint in the country.

COVID-19 has accelerated the growth in e-retailing businesses in both the warehousing and logistics sectors, and investors are actively looking at this strong asset class as an all-time favorite investment.