According to data published by Eurostat, the percentage of businesses in Cyprus that sell via the Internet is higher than the EU average.
In 2021, for 19.7% of EU enterprises, e-commerce sales reached at least 1% of their total turnover, which is 0.7 percentage points higher compared to 2020.
In Cyprus, the percentage of businesses with online sales is 20.1%.
Sweden recorded the highest share of businesses selling online (online sales account for at least 1% of their total turnover) among EU members – 36.6%, followed by Denmark (35.6%) and Ireland (35.2%).
On the other hand, Luxembourg (8.6%), Romania (10.5%) and Bulgaria (11.5%) recorded the lowest shares of businesses selling online.
The highest growth of EU enterprises reporting that their sales through e-commerce reached at least 1% of total turnover in 2021 (compared to 2020) was registered in Finland (27.7%), Spain (29.5%) and Malta (30%).
Conversely, a decrease in the number of companies selling via the Internet (online sales account for at least 1% of their total turnover) was recorded in Denmark (35.6%; -2.7 percentage points), Greece and Belgium (17.0% and 28.3%, respectively; in both cases -2.3 percentage points).
19.4% of all EU businesses reported online sales using websites or apps in 2021 either to private consumers (15.6% of EU businesses) or to businesses and governments (13.1%).
A small proportion of EU enterprises used electronic data exchange sales to sell mainly to their business customers (6.0%).
Enterprises carried out sales through their own business website or application (16.6%) or through the e-commerce market (8.6%).
Based on the location of customers, companies most often sold online to customers in their own country (18.5% of EU enterprises), less often online sales to customers in other EU countries (8.1%) and the rest of the world (4.6%).