Last year's Q4 brought Carrefour hypermarket network sales worth 306 million euros, with December revenues being put at above 100-120m euros, after the number of stores reached 11.

The French group reported 866m-euro sales on the Romanian market for the entire last year, up 54.5% from 2006 (against a constant exchange rate). Total expansion investments amounted to around 80 million euros.

Carrefour posted the biggest year-on-year sales increase in 2007, with the following positions in terms of growth pace being filled by Brazil (40.2%), Poland (38.9%) and Argentina (36%), Carrefour's financial report also shows.

Romania was also among the three countries that led Carrefour sales advance in comparable terms (without taking into account network expansion) on a European scale, together with Spain and Poland, registering organic growth of above 5% in 2007 against 2006.

Carrefour turnover evolution in Romania comes as a result of the expansion of the hypermarket network in 2007 by four stores, with three of them opened in the last quarter of the year. The increase also came amid domestic consumer goods market growth, estimated at 15% in 2007 against 2006, and was also due to Carrefour's embracing a more aggressive marketing policy by developing its services portfolio.

Last year, Carrefour also brought Carrefour Voiaj travel unit domestically, continued its partnership with BRD on the segments of consumer loans and credit cards and signed a new partnership with Omniasig for customer insurance services.

The French retailer expects to go beyond the 1bn-euro mark in terms of sales on the Romanian market this year, with 6 hypermarkets due to be opened, and plans to integrate Artima supermarket network it took over from PEF V last year.

Carrefour could also enter the discounter segment this year by taking over Plus stores from Germa