The forecast: Total retail sales in Southeast Asia grew 2.5% in 2021. Though sales rebounded to the pre-pandemic level of more than $1 trillion, they will not surpass that figure until 2022.

However, ecommerce sales in Southeast Asia increased 26.1% last year to $74.36 billion.

Dive deeper:

• In Vietnam, retail sales dropped 4.0% in 2021 after a 7.0% increase in 2020.
• Malaysia and the Philippines saw a smaller-than-expected rebound in retail sales growth of 2.0% and 4.8%, respectively, last year after a slowdown in 2020 (-6.1% and -7.0%, respectively). 
• Indonesia's 2021 retail sales growth was revised downward to -0.4% from the 3.7% growth estimated in Q2 2021.