Page 13 - RusRPTDec21

2.4 Russia’s e-commerce growth to slow to 10% in 2021
The volume of Russia’s e-commerce trade is expected to slow to 10% in 2021 after it expanded by the pandemic lockdown bump of 59% in 2020, Russian Online Retail Association (AKIT) President Artyom Sokolov told Russian newswire PRIME.
“In 2021, the e-commerce advance in the country was smooth, stable from month to month. The January–September results of 2.41 trillion rubles are slightly above the same period of 2020 of 2.34 trillion rubles,” Sokolov said as cited by PRIME.
Russia’s e-commerce was already booming before the epidemic struck, but an enforced lockdown that started in April 2020 that prevented people leaving the house and ordered them to minimise social contacts lead to a major fillip for the burgeoning online retail business.
“A year ago there were several months of lockdown in the period when e-commerce was the only channel of almost the whole non-grocery retail for a long time, and, as a consequence, we saw abnormally high demand for goods on the Internet. The figure of RUB2.41 trillion proves clients’ interest to the online channel – the patterns of the buyer behaviour that emerged during the tough restrictions in brick-and-mortar retail imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic stay in force after their relief,” Sokolov added.
Russia’s online business has been growing at five times the rate of the real economy, but that growth is starting to slow now and the gap is also being closed at the real economic growth picks up as part of the post-COVID bounce back.
13 RUSSIA Country Report December 2021 www.intellinews.com