Digital Silk Road: Potential Benefits for Malaysia’s Digital Economy

With Covid-19 hitting Malaysia and the world in 2020, various companies were forced to digitise their businesses to stay afloat. While we see that many businesses were not able to sustain themselves through this pandemic, we also see the rapid development of the digital economy, especially through how companies are improvising and changing their business model for business continuity.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Digital Economy Report 2019, the digital economy can be broken down into three main components: (i) core aspects which comprise fundamental innovations and enabling infrastructures; (ii) a narrow scope of the digital economy, which consists of digital and information technology sectors that produce key products or services relying on core digital technologies; and (iii) a broad scope of the digitalised economy where digital products and services are most used. Through this broad scope of the digitalised economy, we see the emergence of e-business, e-commerce, Industry 4.0, sharing economy and the gig economy.