On 28 June 2023, the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation offered the possibility to receive EU funding for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises wishing to implement e-commerce solutions for performing transactions as well as configuring and visualising goods and services.
According to eMarketer, the share of e-commerce in global retail sales was 18.9 per cent in 2022 and is expected to grow to 23 per cent in 2027. As the share of e-commerce grows, so do the levels of e-fraud and losses for online merchants. As many as 75 per cent of all e-commerce companies surveyed by Qualtrics say they have increased their spending on fraud prevention this year, and a fifth of them have increased their spending significantly, by more than 20 per cent.
“Global trends will not bypass Lithuania,” says Sigita Skrebė. “According to the State Data Agency, 60.6 per cent of large enterprises, 46.2 per cent of medium-sized enterprises and 34.9 per cent of small enterprises were engaged in e-commerce in 2021. While large enterprises are usually quite successful in dealing with the challenges of e-commerce security, small and medium-sized enterprises often do not have sufficient resources to tackle these issues. We therefore invite SMEs to take advantage of the new “Digitisation of SMEs” call.”
A total of EUR 5 million will be distributed to SMEs in Vilnius region and EUR 7 million in Central and Western Lithuania.
From 29 September, project implementation plans will have to be submitted via the data exchange website (DMS) of the new EU investment administration information system Investis (https://dms.investis.lt/) for the financial period 2021–2027, instead of by email as before. The Innovation Agency will accept project implementation plans by 30 October 2023, 5:00 p.m.
Further information on the “Digitisation of SMEs” is available here.
