Household consumption up in 2014 for 1st time in 8 years – KSH

Budapest, April 4 (MTI) – Last year, monthly household consumption grew by an annual 2.7 percent in real terms to an average of 68,609 forints (EUR 228) per person, the first time growth has been registered in eight years, the Central Statistical Office said on Saturday.

The KSH’s latest Statistical Mirror publication noted that one reason for higher consumption was the rise in real wages and pensions, which grew by 3.2 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively. Another was the expansion of employment, which meant that more households received a regular wage. This latter factor had an impact especially on poorer households, the KSH said.

A favourable development has been the change in the structure of consumption, the report’s authors said. In basic outgoings the proportion of spending on food has declined. This is also true of money spent on household upkeep, partly thanks to the government-mandated cut in household utility bills, they added, meaning that households had more money left to spend elsewhere.

Source: http://english.mti.hu/