More Finns are eager to purchase goods online, thanks to the plummeting US dollar. According to Finnish Customs, online purchases from the United States have boomed. The most common purchases are car parts. All packages originating from outside the EU are required to go through Customs at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. Officials say that four out of five of those packages have been ordered online. "Consumers shop online because the dollar is so cheap. It's less expensive to make purchases on the web than to shop in stores in Finland," said Customs official Anja Jauhiainen. Last year, the number of packages that had to go through customs grew by some 20 percent. In January, that number was 40 percent higher than the previous year. Kare Casals, the chair of Electronic Commerce Finland, said his association predicts even faster growth in the coming years. The organisation predicts that services and goods purchased on the internet last year reached nearly four billion euros. In spite of the growing enthusiasm for shopping online, only one-third of Finns use the internet to make regular purchases. YLE
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