The international retail chains opened 80 stores in the last ten months, taking the number of modern commerce formats to more than 260, and conquered the last untapped Romanian county, Neamt.
The more crowded the big cities become in terms of modern format stores, the more the international retailers are drawn to towns with even less than 20,000 inhabitants commenting that the low incomes of the consumers do not prevent them from stepping up expansion pace. The discount sector, the most dynamic sector of the Romanian retail market, will double in number of outlets this year, to approximately 200 supermarkets and hypermarkets. The modern retail formats will total about 450 outlets by the end of the year, according to a survey by MEMRB Retail Tracking Services.
The latest opening of the discount hypermarket chain Kaufland at the end of January was a first for the retail sector: the international retail chains have now penetrated all the counties of the country, even those that foreign FMCG distribution companies had previously avoided. Neamt county, bottom of the list of counties in terms of average wage (according to the official statistics), was the last left untapped by foreign trade companies. Kaufland invested 7 million euros to open the first and only modern retail outlet in Neamt county on January 25.
"When we opened the outlet in Piatra Neamt we saw what people buy and how people are buying. The official statistics of average incomes in this area do not verify what we have experienced," stated Gunter Grieb, general manager of the Kaufland Romania network. The counties in northern Moldova, such as Botosani, Vaslui and Suceava are mentioned in the official statistics as areas where the average wage is up to 26% lower than the national average (230 euros, according to the data for the first eight months of 2006), yet the total incomes of the
