Household consumption in Hungary fell by around 9 percent year on year, and no improvement is in sight, national daily Nepszava reported on Thursday, citing a survey by research firm GfK Hungaria.
GfK chief executive Akos Kozak said that that consumer habits have undergone big changes over the 20 years since the change to a democratic regime.
The modernisation of consumption structures has recently come to a halt and it will be a few years before Hungary rejoins the European mainstream in this respect, Kozak told the paper.
Hungarian households currently spend about 25-27 percent of their income on food, as against about 15 percent in an average of western European countries, he said.
Kozak also noted however that Hungarians appeared more optimistic than the actual data would have suggested at the end of summer, early autumn.