MSMEs in cross border E Commerce – Challenges, Opportunities and Trade Facilitation Measures
MSME's and E Commerce MSMEs currently contribute to around 40% of exports of India. E-Commerce is an area that has shown tremendous potential for growth, especially for MSMEs. It is so because MSMEs suffer from certain handicaps in traditional trade models, with regard to access and scale, that are ameliorated in an E-Commerce model. This post shall elaborate some of the challenges and opportunities that pertain specifically to MSMEs when it comes to E-Commerce trade across border before deliberating on the facilitation measures specific to MSMEs. Data from Statista show that retail E commerce trade will grow to around 4.8 Trillion USD by 2021 – around two years from now. Around 30% of this is expected to be cross border trade through E-Commerce route. Data also shows that 82% of enterprises involved in such cross border trade are micro and small scale in size (definition of SMEs vary across countries/organisations). Opportunities for MSMEs in Ecomme