It's no secret that retail sales are weak in Hungary. But a new survey by market research organization GFK Hungária shows just how bad things are. As overall purchases of everyday consumer goods dropped by 3% in the second half of last year and people made markedly fewer shopping trips, sales of vinegar rose because people are using it in place of more expensive cleaning products. Gulp. [inforadio.hu]

According to a survey made by the Hungarian unit of French credit insurance company Coface summarized on index.hu, only 50% of local companies currently holding back on paying their creditors are actually unable to pay because of financial distress. The study of 50,000 companies found that 20% of "nonpaying" have the means to pay their invoices but choose not to, while a further 30% of bad debts have gone bad because of clerical errors. At the time of the survey 4% of the firms where judged to be "totally unqualified" for any sort of credit and an additional 3% were already under bankruptcy proceedings.

Via our friends at the British Chamber of Commerce in Hungary we found this link to an interesting and probably very worthwhile survey on economic and business climate conditions in the region by a group of German chambers. It's a bit confusing at points - we twice confused the buttons for rating the importance of different things with the buttons for how bad the things are - so if you are going to fill it out you'll probably want to stay as sober as possible, given the topic.

A price war has broken out among brand-name diaper manufacturers in Hungary after consumers switched to cheaper store brands as a result of the economy continuing to be down in the dumps, napi.hu reports. Bad jokes aside, prices dropped by as much as 20% in some cases. Pampers, Libero and store brands control an 80-90% share of the Hungarian market.