Philippine e-commerce sales to grow by 17% a year to US$10.3b in 2025: report

E-COMMERCE sales in the Philippines are expected to hit US$10.3 billion by 2025. The growth, up from US$4.8 billion in 2020, would represent a compound annual growth rate of 17 per cent over 5 years, according to a new report by market research firm GlobalData.

Recent e-commerce sales growth was driven by online purchases of retail goods such as groceries and electronics during the Covid-19 pandemic, GlobalData banking and payments senior analyst Shivani Gupta added in a statement on Thursday (Dec 9).

She said: "Rising consumers' preferences for online shopping, increasing number of online merchants, proliferation of alternative payment solutions and government support will support e-commerce sales in the Philippines."

Estimated e-commerce transaction value stood at US$5.5 billion in 2021, higher by 15.1 per cent on the year before. Official data has also shown that the number of e-commerce vendors rose from 1,700 in March 2020 to more than 93,300 in January 2021, the report noted.

A separate GlobalData survey also found that electronic payment methods such as mobile wallets GCash, PayMaya and PayPal made up 30.6 per cent of e-commerce payments in 2021 - the most popular method - compared with 29.8 per cent for cash and 23.5 per cent for cards.

Across the broader Asia-Pacific, GlobalData has projected e-commerce payments to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 12 per cent a year to hit US$4.3 trillion in 2025.