Statistics

As part of the GCC eCommerce Study, (Ernst & Young) conducted a four month long GCC-wide study, which focused on a number of different aspects of eCommerce, including laws and regulations, trade, communications, security, ePayments, and concerns and barriers to the adoption of eCommerce by users in the business, consumer and government sectors, in order to develop a high level plan of action for the GCC countries for growing eCommerce in the region. The study was conducted with the support of technical teams, comprising of nominated subject matter experts, from each country.

In order to assess the current usage levels of B2B eCommerce, they sent questionnaires to over 500 firms in the GCC region, enquiring about the level of usage of eCommerce. They received replies from about 100 firms in all. They used these replies, discussions with key industry players, and review of literature on import statistics and market size estimates, to develop an estimate of the B2B eCommerce value in the GCC region.  They estimated that the current total B2B trade in the region was between $3.5-4.2 billion, of which the automotive industry, the oil industry and IT industry accounted for the bulk of the online transactions. They also estimate that considering the ongoing initiatives in various other segments, particularly in the Oil, Petrochemical and Government sectors, it is likely that the B2B trade in the region could grow to $7.25-9.15 b by 2005.  Overall, eCommerce trade (B2C and B2B) in the GCC region can consequently be expected to amount to between $8 -10 billion by 2005. 

Basin their estimates on reported number of internet subscribers per country, the current and projected median B2C trade values in the GCC countries are as follows:

In summary, Ernst & Young anticipate that the total B2C eCommerce trade in the GCC region will account for approximately 10% of the total eCommerce trade.
As such, using this macro-approach as a basis, they projected the total size of the B2B eCommerce trade in the GCC region to be approximately US$ 7.7 b in 2005. Details of this estimation are shown in the table below.