Government ecommerce figures misleading

NEWS Ecommerce sales figures for the UK have been labeled misleading. UK purchases and sales over the internet reached £56.6bn, According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) study. But David Metcalf, analyst at Forrester, pointed out that the true figure is closer to the £11bn mark. "Business to consumer non-financial sales only reached £2bn. Share trading makes up the rest," he said in an interview with ZDNet. The research - the first to asses Blair's e-Britain initiative - studied 9,000 companies in the UK. It reported 63 per cent of businesses had internet access in 2000, but states only 600 companies were conducting over 50 per cent of work over the internet. Forrester expects 2001 totals for online sales to reach the £12.8bn mark, nowhere close to the government's £56.6bn figure. Metcalf added that Forrester expects the 2001 sales number to hit £300bn by 2005. Significant growth is not expected until 2003.