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Hungary online retail sales post double-digit growth
bne IntelliNews
Online retail sales in Hungary grew 17% to HUF425bn (€1.3bn) last year, just a tad below the 18% annual growth in 2017, according to a joint survey by GKI Digital and Arukereso released on March 13. E-commerce in Hungary accounted for 4.5% of total retail sales turnover last year.
Online sales are growing at a pace three-fold that of retail sales. The number of active online shoppers reached 3.2mn and the average transaction value exceeded HUF11,000, up from HUF10,000 a year earlier, GKI said.
The survey shows Hungarian shoppers placed 38mn orders to domestic e-retailers, up 13% from a year earlier. Each shopper ordered products online 12 times, on average, 7% more than in the previous year.
State electricity firm opens Hungary's largest solar park
bne IntelliNews
Asubsidiary of Hungary’s state-owned electricity company MVM opened Hungary’s largest solar park in Paks, near the country’s sole nuclear power plant, on March 5.
The power plant was completed from a HUF9bn (€28.5mn) investment and will have a maximum capacity of 20.6 MW and will meet the electricity needs of about 8,500 households. The MVM group covered 65% of the investment from own resources and 35% from EU funding.
The opening of the new facility comes two weeks after Hungary's second-largest power plant Matrai Eromu began the trial operation of what was then the country’s largest solar park with an in-built capacity of 20 MW.
The import rate of Hungarian energy consumption is 58%, which can be reduced to less than 50% by production from
Annual average spending came close to HUF133,000.
Almost 80% of total online sales in Hungary are generated
at companies which also have a brick-and-mortar business.
In value terms, sales of consumer electronics generated the most turnover in online trade, followed by toys and cultural goods, computer technology, FMCG goods, fashion and sports, beauty and health, and home and gardening products. Cash transactions still accounted for almost 60% of total sales.
As in the previous three years, Extreme Digital was again Hungary's biggest online retailer last year, according to an annual ranking by market research firm GKI Digital.
Hungary's leading online electronics retailer is also present in eight other countries. The company's last public earnings figure showed revenues rose to HUF33.3bn in 2016 from HUF 29bn in 2016.
environmentally friendly domestic energy sources, increasing the use of local energy, and improving domestic energy storage, according to one of the 330 recommendations made by the National Bank (MNB) to boost the country's competitiveness. The rather ambitious target from the MNB is to increase the share of renewables to 30% by 2030 from 13% at present.
Solar energy accounts for 0.5% of the country's annual electricity production, but that could grow substantially with the construction of new facilities. There are some 3,000MW capacity solar projects in the pipeline.
MVM has begun the construction of 110 solar power plants scattered evenly across the country. The solar parks, with a total built-in capacity of 100MW, are expected to start commercial operation before the end of 2019.
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