E-commerce is doing well in France... and elsewhere?

During its annual conference “E-commerce issues in 2015: drive the digital change”, the FEVAD presented the last figures of e-commerce in France - the sector is booming. 700 million on-line transactions (+15% compared to 2013), €56.8 billion sales thanks to e-commerce (+11% compared to 2013), €4 billion on m-commerce (+54% compared to 2013), 112,000 jobs (FTE), 34.7 million French people buy on the Internet and 6 million on their mobile phones.

This sector is also booming in Europe. According to the organisation Ecommerce Europe, there are 715,000 retail websites, generating €423.8 billion of on-line sales (+14% compared to 2013) and 2.5 million direct and indirect jobs. Europe also counts 331 million on-line buyers. Concerning B2C turnover, the United Kingdom ranks first, followed by Germany and France.

In its 2015 report on the information economy dedicated to e-commerce and to the (sometimes untapped) potential that it represents for developing countries, the UNCTAD provides the global numbers: in 2013, the value of B2B e-commerce got over USD 15,000 billion and that of B2C over USD 1,200 billion. The countries and regions that benefit the most from e-commerce are the United-States, Europe and Asia, with China and Japan leading the way.

In Africa, a boom in e-commerce could facilitate the access of local productions to international markets, increase companies’ productivity, broaden consumers’ choice, make administrative procedures quicker and more transparent for companies and bring national administrations closer to citizens, among other things. To do so, several types of obstacles must be overcome. They are mostly related to infrastructures and logistics, the underdeveloped financial systems, the legal and regulatory framework that does not favour users’ trust, etc. In the ranking carried out by the UNCTAD on the state of preparation to B2C e-commerce, Israel (10th/130) and France (22nd/130) are the first Mediterranean countries. They are followed by Turkey (38th), Lebanon (50th) and Egypt (68th).

The countries studied in the report on e/m-commerce that IPEMED will publish at the end of 2015 appear at the end of the ranking, with Tunisia and Morocco respectively ranking 74th and 75th and Senegal 112th.