Rising online purchases in CEE

Erste Bank Research Team Erste Bank

On the radar

Today, Poland will release the series of data at 9.30 AM CET. Industrial output growth in June is due alongside producer prices. Further labor market data, that is employment and wage growth will also be released.
Slovakia is scheduled to publish unemployment rate.

Economic developments

Summer season makes us look for variety of topics and economic developments in the region. Today, we discuss online purchases in CEE. First of all, it is worth underlying that over the last five years, online purchases grew in all EU and CEE countries. In 2025, in Czechia, Romania, Slovakia and Serbia, roughly 20% more people did online shopping over the last three months compared to 2020, as the pink bar shows. In other countries, increases were more contained. Moreover, more than a fifth of the population in Czechia, Croatia, Poland and Slovakia has bought something online more than six times over last 3 months. Therefore, the share of population with rather high frequency of online purchases in not negligible. Further, turnover form e-commerce (it refers to the total value of sales generated by enterprises through online channels, including websites, apps, and electronic data interchange) differs from 9% in Poland to as much as 18% in Czechia. E-commerce turnover captures both consumption patterns shifting toward digital platforms and firms’ ability to integrate into the Digital Single Market.

Market movements

With reescalation of the Middle East conflict, long-term yields have increased across the region. The biggest upward shift could be observed in Hungary and Poland over last week. CEE currencies have weakened and EURHUF and EURPLN moved higher in particular. On Tuesday, Hungarian central bank holds a rate setting meeting and we expect 25 basis points interest rate cut (to 5.75%). Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok signed a constitutional amendment ending his presidency. In Romania, budget deficit for the first half of the year came in at roughly 2–2.5% of GDP, reducing the risk of a fiscal slippage in the reminder of the year and supporting the 6.2% full-year target. As for global developments, Brent oil price increased to USD 90 per barrel that will bring back worries about inflation rate development and central bank actions in the second half of the year. The ECB will announce interest rate decision on Thursday. Following the rate hike in June, the deposit rate stands at 2.25%. Although renewed tensions in the Middle East are driving up energy prices, inflationary pressures have so far been lower than the ECB expected.

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Erste Bank Research Team

Erste Bank

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