The Ministry of Economy recorded a 13-fold increase in the number of SMEs in the field of e-commerce

The Ministry of Economics records an active growth in the number of small and medium-sized businesses being created (SME) in e-commerce. The number of SMEs that registered their business in this area increased 13 times from 2019 to 2022, Deputy Economic Development Minister Tatyana Ilyushnikova said in an interview with Vedomosti.

During this period, the number of companies (including individual entrepreneurs) operating under the all-Russian classifier of types of economic activity “Retail trade by mail or via the Internet information and communication network” increased from 9,105 to 117,844, she added. The main reasons for this growth were covid restrictions and the inability to carry out activities offline, the Deputy Minister pointed out.

The development of this sector raises the issue of regulating e-commerce, but now this is complicated by the fact that the specifics of the interaction of platforms with businesses are very different, Ilyushnikova points out: “Aggregators have one model, marketplaces have another. Taxi drivers are self-employed, they have questions of social insurance, responsibility for the passenger. Marketplaces have questions of logistics, storage, marketing costs, taxes: this is more like the interaction of a supplier with networks, which is described in the law on trade. Bulletin boards are primarily questions of integrity.” According to her, it is impossible to resolve these issues in one act.