The number of foreign ecommerce parcels to Russia increased by 25%

In January 2019 Russian Post processed 35.9 million parcels from foreign online stores, which is 25% more than for the same period of last year. For comparison, a year ago this number was 28.8 million.

Press service of Russian Post explains high numbers of January by a prolonged duration of the peak period. It lasted from the end of November to December, and today goes on for three months — from November to January. That is one of the indicators of a growing interest in foreign products by the Russian population.

Since January 1, 2019, the threshold of duty-free import of foreign items was 500 euros. Before it was possible to transport an item worth up to 1 thousand euros. The largest weight of a parcel has to be no more than 31 kg. per person in a month. But this change almost did not affect the number of parcels from foreign shops, including more expensive ones, as shown by the analysis of Romir research company. It conducted a survey among economically active residents of the large cities of Russia in the summer of 2018.

Reduction of a duty-free threshold of import of purchases from foreign shops was supposed to stimulate Russians to buy internal products. But it became clear that Russians already were not making too many foreign purchases. The poll showed that only 5% of the Russian online buyers make purchases for the sum from 200 to 500 euros. From 100 to 200 euros — only 9%. 16% of buyers made orders for the sum from 50 to 100 euros. Items for the sum from 10 to 50 euros are ordered most often — 39%. Small purchases for the sum up to 10 euros made up 19% of orders.

DHL Express which delivers goods from Farfetch, Net-a-Porter, Amazon, ShopBop noted the growth of the number of parcels from large online stores to Russia in January 2019 of 20%.

Russian Post has been taking further steps to make its services more convenient and accessible to the population, such as increasing the number of POS-terminals throughout the country, one of the preferred ways of payment among the residents.

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