In Romania, ICT grew at around 8% annually in 2017-2021 to 3.5 billion euros. However, investments in this sector are still low compared to countries such as Poland (14 billion euros), Czechia (9 billion euros), or Lithuania (7 billion euros).
Thus, digital commerce represents around 66% of the entire digital economy – this segment grew by 17% annually, almost doubling from EUR 5.2 billion in 2017 to EUR 9.8 billion in 2021.
The widespread growth can be seen considering the share of SMEs selling online, for instance, which more than doubled from 7 percent in 2017 to 17 percent in 2021.
Romania is the second largest digital commerce market in CEE, after Poland (26.7 billion euros) and before Czechia (9.1 billion euros). However, the average expenditure on digital commerce per capita and the digital commerce penetration rate are some of the lowest in the region.
Romania’s digital commerce per capita was around 506 euros in 2021 – while the Digital Challengers’ average was 673. The highest levels of digital commerce per capita are in Lithuania (1,064 euros in 2021), followed by Slovenia (866 euros) and Czechia (849 euros)
In Romania, digital represents just 14% of the total retail segment (68.9 billion euros), the rest being represented by offline commerce (59.1 billion euros).
With 14% penetration, Romania has one of the lowest rates of digital commerce in total retail in CEE, the average for Digital Challengers being 16%.