Tuesday March 19th, 2024
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Egyptian Shoppers Have Spent EGP 400 Billion Online in 2020

Online shoppers throughout Egypt has spent EGP 400 billion since the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic began. That's a full third of our domestic trade!

Staff Writer

As a global community, we’ve gone back and forth on the pros and cons of lockdown and what it all means - not just for national economies, but for the way we exchange goods all over the world and at what price point. Take the tourism industry, for example, which has suffered a serious blow for obvious reasons. But what we’ve just learned is that actually many businesses are profiting from the pandemic, and we aren’t just talking about mask and alcohol companies— we mean serious business.


Online shopping took a huge surge in Egypt after lockdown and has remained at an all-time high. In fact, buying and selling online amounts to EGP 400 billion out of the EGP 1.2 trillion that Egypt makes through trade annually. That means that a third of all our domestic trade has been done solely online since the pandemic began.


Dr. Ibrahim Ashmawy, Assistant Minister of Supply, gave an unnamed example of one of Egypt’s biggest commerce chains finding success this year, which he said made EGP5 million in sales before the pandemic. After lockdown, their sales skyrocketed to a total of EGP50 million— ten times more than what they were selling before.