CONCLUSION
- The TPP can bring about a larger market to Malaysian entrepreneurs, especially easier access to the existing 8 trading partners and 4 relatively new markets.
- The ease in access resulting from greater tariff elimination and reducing non-trade barriers could facilitate the whole cross-border trading activities.
- TPPA has also place some emphasis on the new trend of doing business by including commitments on E-commerce.
- The TPPA puts in place sets of rules on e-commerce to ensure that national regulations do not restrict cross-border data flows, or impose localisation requirements as pre-requisites for serving consumers in that market, or impose import duties on electronically transmitted products. Businesses can gain economies of scale by serve multiple TPP markets from one location. SMEs seeking to serve overseas markets would certainly benefit from the savings of establishment costs.
- While TPPA and E-commerce may enhance market access, SMEs particularly smaller local brick and mortar places may face competitive challenges from other foreign players. Although companies may leverage on e-commerce to expand their markets, the gap relative to the savvier e-commerce companies from matured e-commerce TPP countries such as the United States and Japan calls for capacity building. Therefore, to stay ahead, we need to intensify capacity building programmes for the SMEs, while enhancing and widening the e-commerce infrastructure.
- Despite the challenges, there are now more opportunities for ready-SMEs to reach out to a wider market access for goods and cross-border services arising from greater tariff elimination, lowering of non-trade barriers, and lower cost derived from the effectiveness of e-commerce.
