Local businesses online sales growing

For 20.1% of Cyprus enterprises (19.7% in the EU), e-commerce sales reached at least 1% of their total turnover, which was 3 percentage points higher (+0.7 pp EU) than the previous year.

According to Eurostat data for 2021, Sweden recorded the highest share of enterprises selling online (e-sales of at least 1% of their total turnover) among the EU members with 36.6%, followed by Denmark (35.6%) and Ireland (35.2%).

Luxembourg (8.6%), Romania (10.5%) and Bulgaria (11.5%) recorded the lowest shares of enterprises selling online.

The highest increases in EU enterprises reporting their e-commerce sales reached at least 1% of their total turnover in 2021 (compared with 2020) were recorded in Finland (27.7%; +4.2 pp), Spain (29.5%; +3.7 pp) and Malta (30.0%; +3.3 pp).

In contrast, decreases in enterprises selling online (e-sales of at least 1% of their total turnover) were recorded in Denmark (35.6%; -2.7 pp), Greece and Belgium (17.0% and 28.3%, respectively; both -2.3 pp).

A share of 19.4% of all EU enterprises reported conducting online sales using websites or apps (web sales), either to private consumers (15.6% of EU enterprises) or to businesses and governments (13.1%).

A small share of EU enterprises used electronic-data-interchange-type sales to sell mainly to their business customers (6.0%).

Businesses performed online sales through their website or app (16.6%) or an e-commerce marketplace (8.6%).

Based on the location of the customers, it was most common for enterprises to conduct web sales to customers in their own country (18.5% of EU enterprises), with less frequent web sales to customers in other EU countries (8.1%) and the rest of the world (4.6%).