Billa: There’s a gush of consumption declines

The head of operations with Billa, the biggest supermarket network on the market, sees a "cascade" of consumption declines in the following months and says the first signals of a consumption pick-up will only come after a period of market stabilisation. Nevertheless, the retailer plans to speed up expansion in 2011 and is watching the market for store acquisitions. "There's a cascade of consumption slumps in all the fields, which, once started, is hard to halt: salary cuts are likely to lead to falling turnover for many players in the private sector, which in their turn will probably have to cut their employees' salaries or downsize personnel, which will hurt consumption, too," states Filip Cristescu, the COO of Billa Romania, a company with 288m-euro turnover in 2009. The supermarket network this year counts on turnover similar with that of 2009 as it bets on expansion this year, too. Eight of the 15 new projects on the list of 2010 expansion have been already finalised, driving the network to a total number of 51 stores. "We see a potential of over 200 Billa supermarkets on the Romanian market," says Cristescu.