Singapore has "long been positioned as a logistics hub, so when EC and logistics come together we have at the national level twin goals of being a logistics as well as EC hub," said Tan Sek Wah, Deputy Director, transportation lab, of Kent Ridge Digital Labs.

"These two can synergise and work very well together."

He said there were many innovative companies in the West, but more were being attracted to Singapore because of its infrastructure and policies conducive to helping them establish themselves.

Singapore's government, keen to promote E-commerce and the Internet, would give businesses some advantages, Tansaid.

"We're attracting them and attempting to leverage off our logistics capabilities... we can gain an edge," he said.

Bernard Lo, a director of The Chartered Institute of Transport, told Reuters that with the advent of the Internet and web technology, industry had to restructure and reorganise to catch up.

Book retailer Amazon.com Inc was one example where logistics could be improved to complement its successful online retail business, he said.

On average, it could take up to four weeks for a book to be delivered from the United States to Asia once ordered via the Internet.

Such a time lag in an increasingly competitive environment might not be an acceptable standard in future.

Transport officials said one trend was for product sellers to use a third party for deliveries, such as Federal Express.

"Singapore has been pushing for this kind of operations. We have the infrastructure, the facilities, network and definitely the skills," Lo said.

The challenge, however, was to keep costscompetitive with the rest of the region, he said.

Industry executives said logistics had to be better integrated with electronics commerce.

"That is one reason why we want to bring the logistics community together to expose them to concepts and ideas of E-commerce," said Tan.

The International Data Corp estimates Singapore's information technology demand will rise to $4.58 billion in 2002 from $2.67 billion last year.

Official figures say E-commerce is expected to soar to $833 million by 2001, from $5 million last year.