Scrapping Sunday shopping restrictions could lift GDP

Budapest, April 12 (MTI) – The rollback of restrictions on Sunday shopping could add two-tenths of a percentage point to Hungary’s GDP this year, ING Bank’s chief analyst said in Tuesday’s issue of business daily Világgazdaság.

Re-opening big retailers on Sundays could lift this year’s GDP from 2.3 percent to 2.5 percent, András Balatoni told the paper. Retailers could add more staff and even raise wages because of the extra shopping day, too, he added.

Raiffeisen Bank senior analyst Zoltán Török told the paper that the Sunday shopping restrictions did not support retail sales, but the size of the impact was impossible to gauge. He added that “large-scale” wage rises would be needed to deal with the labour shortage in the retail sector.

Hungary’s government submitted a bill to Parliament on Monday that would end restrictions on Sunday shopping immediately. For a little more than a year, retailers over 200sqm have been forced to close on Sundays, with just a few exceptions.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters