Thousands of shops disappear every year in Hungary. By now, there are nearly 300 towns and villages in the country where there is no convenience store.
Unsurprisingly, the Covid crisis has further worsened the situation for shops, as Portfolio reports. At the end of 2020, there were nearly 116 thousand convenience stores in Hungary, almost 18 thousand fewer than at the end of 2015 and nearly 4 thousand fewer than at the end of 2019, according to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH).
The virus primarily affected non-food businesses. For example, the shops at the petrol stations were less affected.
The main decline is in the number of small convenience stores. The data refers to shops with a floor area of less than 120 square meters and between 120 and 1000 square meters. Since 2015, the number of these shops has steadily decreased. The number of shops smaller than 120 square meters has fallen by 15% in 5 years.
However, the number of units larger than 1,000 square meters has increased by 6.8 percent over the past five years.
Featured image via Attila Balázs/MTI
