Switzerland First on Ecommerce Index

For a few years now, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has been ranking 152 countries on their readiness to engage in ecommerce. As usual, Europe is by far the most prepared region for online retail, the latest index shows. Aside from Singapore (4^th place) and Hong Kong (10^th), all countries in the top 10 are from Europe (see the table below).

And for the first time, it’s Switzerland that leads the ecommerce Index of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, just ahead of the Netherlands, which ranked first in 2018 and in 2019.

Top 10 economies in the UNCTAD B2C E-commerce Index 2020

These countries are ranked based on different factors, such as the access to secure internet servers, reliability of postal services and infrastructure, and the portion of the population that uses the internet and has an account with a financial institution or a provider of mobile money services.

Shamika N. Sirimanne, director of UNCTAD’s division that prepares the annual index admits that the ecommerce divide remains huge and Even among G20 countries, the extent to which people shop online ranges from 3 percent in India to 87 percent in the United Kingdom.

What’s even more interesting is that the two largest ecommerce markets in the world, China and the United States, are nowhere to be found in the top 10. China ranks 55^th this year, while the US ends in 12^th place. Both countries lead in several absolute measures, they seem to lag in relative comparisons.

Internet penetration in the United States is lower than in any of the economies in the top 10, while China ranks 87^th in the world on this indicator. As for online shopping penetration, the United States ranks 12^th while China takes the 33^rd slot.