Q2/2020 - UNCTAD

Virtual e-commerce week, Geneva, 27 – 30. April 2020

The UNCTAD eWeek event with dozens of workshops and plenaries was held as a virtual meeting from 27 April to 1 March 2020. On 27 April 2020, UNCTAD published its annual report on the development of electronic commerce. According to the latest figures of UNCTAD, global e-commerce sales amounted to USD 25.6 trillion in 2018. This is an increase of 8 percent on 2017. The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the uptake of digital commerce, said Shamika Sirimanne, Director of UNCTAD’s Technology and Logistics Division, when she presented the report. According to Sirimanne, further increase, possibly in the two-digit range, can be expected for 2019 and 2020. Accounting for USD 21 trillion, business-to-business (B2B) made up the largest share in 2018. Business-to-consumer trade (B2C9 accounted for USD 4.4 trillion. The three leading e-commerce states were the United States (USD 8.6 trillion), Japan (USD 3.3 trillion) and China (USD 2.3 trillion). Germany with USD 722 billion held rank seven. All in all, more than 1.4 trillion people do online shopping today. With 610 trillion online shoppers, China features the largest number of e-consumers worldwide[1].

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Q2/2020
  1. [1] Global e-Commerce hits .6 trillion – latest UNCTAD estimates, UNCTAD, Geneva, 27 April 2020: „ E-commerce sales hit .6 trillion globally in 2018, up 8% from 2017, according to the latest available estimates released today by the UN’s trade and development body, UNCTAD, at the start of its UNCTAD eWeek event. The online event will explore digital solutions and policies to help the world recover from the coronavirus crisis. It runs from 27 April to 1 May and features dialogues among ministers, heads of international organizations, business executives and civil society representatives. According to the UNCTAD analysis, the estimated 2018 e-commerce sales value, which includes business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, was equivalent to 30% of global gross domestic product (GDP) that year. “The coronavirus crisis has accelerated the uptake of digital solutions, tools and services, but the overall impact on the value of e-commerce in 2020 is still hard to predict,” said Shamika Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics. The 2017 value of global e-commerce was estimated at .8 trillion, based on a revised methodology. The value of global B2B e-commerce in 2018 was trillion, representing 83% of all e-commerce, comprising both sales on online market platforms and electronic data interchange transactions. B2C e-commerce was valued at .4 trillion, up by 16% from 2017. Cross-border B2C e-commerce sales amounted to 4 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 7% over 2017. The United States continued to dominate the overall e-commerce market (Table 1). It remained among the top three countries by B2C e-commerce sales, alongside China and the United Kingdom, in: https://unctad.org/en/pages/PressRelease.aspx?OriginalVersionID=552