Shopping from the comfort of home has long been a daily routine for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and everything they can’t find in BiH. market, consumers do not hesitate to order from abroad, so the online market this year weighed more than 2.8 million KM.
This is shown by the data of the Administration for Indirect Taxation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and as pointed out by this institution for “Nezavisne novine”, this amount refers to the value of customs goods in postal traffic, at customs offices in Banja Luka, Mostar and Sarajevo for nine months of this year.
Duties on shipments, as stated by the ITA of BiH, were in the amount of 636,365 KM.
“These are shipments that are subject to import customs clearance, namely: the value of goods over 300 KM ordered by a natural person from a legal entity, i.e. the value of goods over 90 KM ordered by a natural person from another natural person from abroad”, explained the ITA of BiH.
This is precisely what shows that the actual number of orders from abroad is significantly higher, because the ITA of BiH records only shipments whose value is higher than the mentioned values, while the consignees are exempt from paying import duties for shipments below those values.
Looking at the same period last year, when the total value of the cleared goods was about 2.6 million marks, the duties amounted to 574,911 KM.
More and more citizens buy through foreign platforms
Snežana Šešlija, executive director of the Citizens’ Association “ToPeeR” Doboj, also believes that online shopping is significantly higher than the numbers indicate, who points out that we also have a store through Facebook pages that are not registered anywhere.
“Citizens have begun to buy everything online, far more than in previous years. Consumers have become bolder and have learned a lot from consumer associations. Now they know how to recognize fraud, so fraud is no longer so common,” she told “Nezavisne novine”.
The pandemic and new platforms accelerated the growth of e-commerce
As he adds, the corona virus pandemic and then the appearance of platforms like “Temu” have further encouraged citizens to shop online.
“We are not a people who are used to this type of trade or shopping, so covid has shown that it is possible to shop that way. On the other hand, we have also created a mental consumer who is addicted to e-commerce, marketing tricks have also contributed to this, but I think that covid has taught us how to use online shopping”, she explains, adding that the pandemic also forced the elderly to switch to online shopping.
Shipping more expensive than the product
Internet shopping is no stranger to Ivana M. from Banja Luka, who points out that she has been shopping abroad for years through various sales sites.
“Many things I use, such as cosmetics, are not available here, so I buy them online and I have never had a problem. However, I buy where it has been checked,” says Ivana.
As he points out, the problem can be the delivery, which is sometimes more expensive than the product itself.
“The problem is that we are not in the European Union, so delivery services are often significantly more expensive for BiH than for other countries. There are not rare situations when the delivery is more expensive than the product, so sometimes I don’t buy anything because of that,” she points out for “Nezavisne novine”.
