The Global E-commerce Index report is released, and Israel tops the list in the Middle East!

The report shows that globally, Israel's e-commerce index is 83.9, ranking 26th , down 4 places from 2019. The Middle Eastern country after Israel is the UAE, with an e-commerce index of 78.2, ranking 37th , down 9 places from 2019.

From the above chart, we can see that the UAE is relatively inferior in terms of Internet security and logistics reliability , which makes it rank low. Although the UAE ranks lower than Israel, its e-commerce development and scale are better than the latter.

According to Statista data, the scale of e-commerce in the UAE is expected to reach US$11.034 billion by 2025, while that in Israel is US$8.433 billion. In addition, the e-commerce user penetration rate in the UAE is 22 percentage points higher than that in Israel, at 69.4%.

Rankings of other Middle Eastern countries: Iran (44th), Saudi Arabia (49th), Qatar (50th), Oman (54th), Turkey (57th), Kuwait (58th), Lebanon (64th), Bahrain (66th), Jordan (76th), Egypt (109th), and Iraq (129th).

Although these Middle Eastern countries are not ranked high overall, among the top ten developing economies or regions in the e-commerce index, five are from the Middle East, which is enough to show the potential for e-commerce development in the region.

According to Kaerney's forecast, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will accelerate the growth of e-commerce in the Middle East, and it is expected that the scale of e-commerce in the Middle East will reach US$50 billion by 2025.

In addition to the above, UNCTAD's report has other highlights. In 2020, Switzerland replaced the Netherlands to take the first place in the Global E-commerce Index , with the difference of only 0.1 points between the two.

The top ten countries and regions are Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, Ireland, Norway, and Hong Kong, China. Overall, Europe is still the region with the best preparation for e-commerce.

middle East

Israel

E-commerce