Online retail sales' share increased to 19% in 2020: UNCTAD

Online retail sales grew markedly in several countries, with South Korea reporting the highest share at 25.9 per cent in 2020, up from 20.8 per cent the year before, according to the report, “Estimates of global e-commerce 2019 and preliminary assessment of COVID-19 impact on online retail 2020”. The report was released by UNCTAD as it hosted a two-day intergovernmental meeting on measuring e-commerce and the digital economy.

Meanwhile, global e-commerce sales jumped to $26.7 trillion globally in 2019, up 4 per cent from 2018, according to the latest available estimates. This includes business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, and is equivalent to 30 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) that year.

“These statistics show the growing importance of online activities. They also point to the need for countries, especially developing ones, to have such information as they rebuild their economies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Shamika Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics.

The report estimates the value of global B2B e-commerce in 2019 at $21.8 trillion, representing 82 per cent of all e-commerce, including both sales over online market platforms and electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions. While, B2C e-commerce sales were estimated at $4.9 trillion in 2019, up 11 per cent over 2018. The top three countries by B2C e-commerce sales remained China, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Cross-border B2C e-commerce amounted to some $440 billion in 2019, an increase of 9 per cent over 2018. The UNCTAD report also notes that the share of online shoppers making cross-border purchases rose from 20 per cent in 2017 to 25 per cent in 2019.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RKS)