Call to set up office to bolster British e-commerce exports

MINISTERS have been urged to set up a dedicated office to help UK firms export products using e-commerce.

More than £9bn in growth and 150,000 new jobs could be added to the economy if small to medium-sized businesses sell more goods to overseas buyers via the internet, according to a think tank study.

In an attempt to make this a reality, the Social Market Foundation (SMF) has called for an “Office for E-commerce and Digital Trade” to be set up within the Department for International Trade.

Britain is ranked second out of 30 global economies for its potential to make trade deals that lead to environmental and social improvements. The Sustainable Trade Index, compiled by the Institute for Management Development and the Hinrich Foundation, found the UK outperforms the US and Japan in trading in a sustainable way.

The SMF is also calling for the Government to work with online marketplaces to identify the businesses that already make “unsolicited exports” to foreign buyers and help them to turn this into a proper revenue stream. The foundation said that while world exports had increased by 7.9pc since the end of 2019, they had fallen 21pc in the UK. “E-commerce can help address this problem,” the foundation’s report said.

The foundation’s analysis found that retailers selling overseas through a website typically generated £100,000 a year through e-commerce exports. At firms with 10 or more employees, the average rose to about £950,000.

In a “stretching” scenario where 70,000 more small and medium-sized enterprises began exporting, boosting their revenues by £12.4bn, the benefit to Britain’s economic output would come to £9.3bn and create 152,000 full time jobs, the foundation said. The study was funded by Amazon.