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Annual online shopping in Iran amounts to $18.5B

Business Materials 1 March 2015 17:39 (UTC +04:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 1

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

Online shopping in Iran has amounted to 500 trillion rials so far (about $18.5 billion) in the current Iranian fiscal year, which ends on March 20.

Ali-Asghar Tofiq, an official with the Iranian Ministry of Industry, Mining, and Trade, said that online shopping in Iran accounts for one percent of the total online shopping in the world, Iran's IRNA news agency reported on March 1.

The value of online shopping in Iran rose by 229 percent in the current year compared to the year before, he said.

Iran is one of the world's biggest untapped ecommerce markets. The sector constitutes at best about 0.7 percent of GDP, according to unofficial figures, much less than in neighbouring countries such as Turkey and the UAE. But it has massive potential, say analysts.

There are an estimated 15,000 Iranian online shopping sites, although bureaucratic delays mean only about a third have received operating licenses, according to a report by Financial Times.

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