Digital Trade Regulatory Review for Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean:ESCAP-ECA-ECLAC Initiative on Digital Trade Regulatory Analysis

Abstract

The RDTII 2.0 index score gives a sense of the regulations facing digital trade businesses in an economy. The index scores indicate how significantly the regulatory environment adds to the cost of doing digital trade-related businesses. Regulatory interventions are not necessarily trade impediments. An example is that businesses may fully recognize the value and importance of regulations, such as privacy protection, to foster digital trust and use. However, a complex, ambiguous and heterogeneous regulatory environment can increase the costs of doing business and trade if the regulatory standards considerably differ across jurisdictions. The index, therefore, addresses such issues by considering the measures both related to the lack of important legal frameworks and to reduced flexibility of business and interoperability in digital economy through regulations. International treaties or model laws are used as benchmarks to assess regulatory interoperability. The report has five chapters. The first chapter summarizes the Regional Digital Trade Integration Index (RDTII) 2.0 framework of the United Nations Regional Commissions in Asia-Pacific, Africa, and LAC. The common approach in data collection and analysis allows for comparison of the results across the three regions. Chapters two, three, and four present key findings from RDTII 2.0 for the Asia-Pacific, African, and LAC regions, respectively. The final chapter draws on results obtained across the three regions to offer digital trade policy recommendations. Overall, enhancing regional integration through more digital trade between economies requires finding common ground on digital trade regulatory approaches as well as reducing policy ambiguity and restrictions that affect digital trade and investment.