Eurostat: only 7 pct of Romanian businesses had online sales in 2016

Eurostat statistics show that on average, 16 percent of enterprises in the EU which employed at least 10 people had received orders via websites or apps in 2016, compared to 10 percent in 2010.

Romania is on the last place among EU member states, with only 7 percent of businesses receiving orders on the web – although there may be more which are not included in the data due to the fact that they employ fewer than 10 people. Other states with low levels of online sales were Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia and Italy.

The EU countries with the most enterprises with web sales were Ireland (26 percent), Sweden (25 percent), Denmark (24 percent) and the Netherlands (22 percent).

Among EU enterprises with web sales in 2016, nearly all sold to their own country (97 percent), while less than half (44 percent) sold to customers in other EU states and 28 percent to non-EU customers.

The European Commission aims at creating a Digital Single Market where e-commerce among member states is as smooth as the sales of a traditional brick and mortar outlet within any country. Yet, almost 2 in every 5 EU enterprises with web sales to other EU Member States in 2016 reported difficulties in doing so, notably due to the costs of delivering and/or the linguistic barriers.

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Cyprus and Austria had the most cross-border sales to other EU states, while Romania and Finland had the lowest levels of cross-border e-commerce.

In Romania, 45 percent of enterprises with 10 or more employees have a website; out of the businesses who received online orders, 91 percent sold to Romanian customers, 28 percent sold to other EU states and only 9 percent sold to non-EU countries.