Ecommerce in Russia to be worth 16 billion euros in 2017

Ecommerce in Russia was worth 498 billion rubles, or 7.2 billion euros, in the first half of this year. This is an increase of 22 percent year-on-year. The Russian online retail industry is expected to be worth 15.99 billion euros at the end of this year.

This was said by Russian Post and the Association of Internet Trade Companies (AITC) today. These organization also announced that cross-border trade in Russia even grew harder than the total ecommerce industry, as it increased by 34 percent year-on-year during the first six months of this year. The ecommerce association expects cross-border to account for 37 percent of ecommerce in Russia at the end of this year, and thus be worth over 6 billion euros.

‘Huge imbalance between imports and exports’

“If cross-border ecommerce keeps those growth rates it will squeeze out Russia’s online sales of small appliances and apparel within a couple of years”,  Alexey Fedorov, president of AITC, warned Russian ecommerce companies. Local sellers of appliances and electronics saw their revenues grow 11 percent and it’s now worth 1.4 billion euros. ” We evidence a huge imbalance between imports and exports.”

Russians like to shop online in China

When online shoppers in Russia decide to shop abroad, they do this mostly in China, which has a 90 percent share of foreign goods ordered by Russian customers. It’s followed by the European Union (4 percent) and the United States (2 percent). In terms of spending amount, China accounts for 52 percent, while the EU and the US account for respectively 23 and 12 percent.