Latin America still occupies discrete position in global e-commerce ranking

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Costa Rica and Chile were the Latin American economies best positioned in the annual index on the implementation of electronic commerce published this week by the UN Conference for Trade and Development (Unctad), although the region occupied discrete positions globally.

Costa Rica rose six positions compared to the index published last year and was ranked 56th out of 152 economies, while Chile, which in 2020 was the best placed Latin American country, gained only two places, thus it ranked 59th.

In the four variables measured by the index, both countries achieved their best scores in terms of internet users, but Costa Rica had a low score with regard to the security of its servers and Chile in the reliability of its mail service.

Other prominent Latin American countries were Brazil (in 62nd place), the Dominican Republic (67), Colombia (68) and Uruguay (72), while Mexico, despite being one of the largest economies in the region, was one of the that scored worst, falling to 93rd place, below Peru (79), Argentina (82) or even Venezuela (90).

The four largest increases in index scores were recorded in developing countries – Algeria, Brazil, Ghana and Lao People’s Democratic Republic, whose scores surged by at least five points, largely due to significant improvements in postal reliability.

Region still low with regards to the Global proportion

Unctad highlighted in its report that although Latin America accounts for 9% of the world’s population and 11% of Internet users, it only represents 6% of global online buyers. Although the index mainly handles data from 2019, so it does not yet measure the effects of the Pandemic on Internet users’ consumption habits, Unctad highlighted that 7.3 million Brazilians bought for the first time on the Internet during the health crisis, and a similar boom was recorded in neighboring Argentina.

The world ranking was led for the first time by Switzerland, followed by the Netherlands, Denmark, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Norway and Hong Kong.

Europe remains by far the most prepared region for e-commerce, according to UNCTAD’s Business-to-Consumer (B2C) E-commerce Index 2020, but wide gaps with countries with the lowest level of readiness need to be addressed by tackling weaknesses in those nations to spread the benefits of digital transformation to more people.

For the first time, Switzerland leads the UNCTAD B2C E-commerce Index, just ahead of the Netherlands. In 2019, 97% of the Swiss population used the internet. The only non-European economies among the top 10 are Singapore, ranked fourth, and Hong Kong (China) in the 10th position.

The index scores 152 nations on their readiness for online shopping, worth an estimated US$4.4 trillion globally in 2018, up 7% from the previous year.