With the rapid advancement in information and communication technology (ICT) and the equally rapid spread of the Internet, a new system has emerged to revolutionize international trade and business--e-commerce. E-commerce has definitely come of age. Unfortunately, not yet for the Philippines. As this issue's main article shows, the country has been left behind by its Asian neighbors in e-commerce activity, ranking even lower in a number of areas than Thailand and Indonesia, which started using the Internet at around the same time or even much later than the Philippines. This translates to trade losses that our own economy could have captured had we been more swift, focused, and aggressive in improving our technical and human capacities and the access to telecommunications infrastructure of the large majority of the population, as well as in fixing the gaps in our current legal and regulatory framework.
