ASEAN agreement on e-commerce is signed in Singapore
On the sidelines of the 33rd ASEAN Summit in Singapore, the Economic Ministers of the delegate countries signed the ASEAN Agreement on e-Commerce, which is part of the implementation of the ASEAN Work Programme on Electronic Commerce 2017-2025. The agreement aims to facilitate cross-border e-commerce transactions and promote confidence in the use of e-commerce in the region to drive economic growth and social development. It comprises commitments on the fields of cybersecurity, data localization and data flows, ensuring that companies and consumers can easily access and move data across borders, without the need to “build expensive and unnecessarily redundant data centres in every market”. The agreement also contains provisions on online consumer protection, personal data protection alternative online dispute resolution mechanisms for e-commerce transactions. In parallel, the ASEAN summit also welcomed the endorsement of the ASEAN Digital Integration Framework, which identifies the economic benefits and challenges posed by digital integration for ASEAN and its Member States, with particular attention to MSMEs.
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