Trade relationships mimic hiking in bear country. Hikers travel in groups to maximize safety, even if they prefer solo. The hiker who breaks out when the bear attacks survives not by outrunning the bear – just the other hikers.

Likewise, in the trade world, winning means outperforming your competitors. It’s all relative.

In December 2021, a group of 67 World Trade Organization (WTO) members successfully concluded a landmark negotiation effort aimed at simplifying trade in services. This later expanded to include 72 members. This initiative, known as the Joint Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation, established a new set of rules designed to increase the transparency and predictability of regulatory systems. At its core, the agreement is not about deregulation, but rather about promoting good regulatory practices in services trade. It addresses the procedural hurdles, or “red tape,” that service suppliers encounter when seeking to operate in foreign markets. These often include complex and opaque licensing requirements, qualification procedures, and technical standards that can create unnecessary friction and costs for businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises.

On a humid morning in Kuala Lumpur, Aminah sets up her roadside food stall. Her business is informal—unregistered, untaxed, and unprotected. She works long hours but cannot access loans or government support.

Across ASEAN, women face similar constraints. In rural Sabah, Malaysia, a woman artisan recounted the challenges of selling products online: poor road access, costly logistics, weak internet connectivity, and limited digital skills, all compounded by expectations that she balances entrepreneurship with domestic responsibilities.

Trade in digitally delivered services is reshaping the Asia-Pacific economy, creating opportunities far beyond large technology firms. Across the region, small, women-led start-ups are using cross-border digital services to expand markets, create jobs, and deliver measurable social impact. Evidence from a recent studyof 15 firms in 11 economies shows how open digital trade enables these businesses to scale, compete internationally, and contribute to inclusive growth.

India has emerged as one of the world's leading exporters of digitally delivered services (DDS), shifting its interests from preserving domestic policy space to shaping the rules governing digital trade. As a major beneficiary of open digital markets, India now stands to gain more from participating in global digital trade rulemaking—including potentially through the WTO E-Commerce Agreement (ECA)—than from remaining outside it.

Every day, a small manufacturer in Nairobi or a farmers' cooperative in Peru can sell to customers on the other side of the world. Cross-border digital trade has become a powerful engine of growth for developing countries — a way to reach global buyers without a warehouse or a brick-and-mortar bank. Yet, the largest untapped opportunity today lies in digitally delivered services — software, design and business-process work—which are growing faster than goods trade. Digital financial inclusion has fuelled this global trend: the World Bank's 2025 Findex shows that 61% of adults in developing economies make or receive a digital payment, up from 35% a decade ago. Firms and individuals have embraced the digital ecosystem because it delivers tangible benefits.

Digital services trade depends on moving data between organizations and across borders. Yet many firms remain hesitant. They fear losing control of sensitive information, breaching data-protection rules, or becoming locked into a single platform. A public-private partnership now offers a practical answer. Open “data spaces” let participants share data on clearly defined terms while keeping ownership and control. This is a quiet but significant win for trusted digital trade.

As companies rethink where they produce and source goods, Asia's production networks are evolving. This shift creates new opportunities for South Asia, but the region has yet to fully take advantage of them. Despite its size and economic potential, South Asia remains only loosely connected to the production networks that link much of Asia’s economy. A key part of the solution lies in transport services, which determine whether goods can move quickly, reliably, and at competitive cost.

For decades, trade compliance was almost entirely a manual undertaking. Goods classification, origin determination, tariff calculations, and regulatory monitoring traditionally relied on teams of customs officers and trade compliance professionals reviewing regulations, spreadsheets, and supporting documentation. That landscape is changing rapidly.

For decades, African women have been central to processing and manufacturing higher value products, yet they have remained largely excluded from industrial infrastructure, finance, technology, and formal markets. The African Women in Processing (AWIP) Initiative is beginning to change this reality. Established as a flagship African Union program, AWIP is enabling more women-owned enterprises to move beyond supplying raw materials into processing, manufacturing, branding and selling finished products. Today, AWIP is evolving into a continental network of women-led industrial parks that support industrialization, create jobs, strengthen regional production networks, and expand opportunities under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).