Christmas retail tills are jingling as never before

The public will spend a total of zł.21 billion, of which zł.7.5 billion will be designated for gifts, while the remainder will be spent on organizing Christmas itself. "December is translating into two and a half months of regular months - expensive food products are selling particularly well," said Jerzy Mazgaj, president of Alma delicatessen. Economists believe that even very high expenditures related to Christmas should not affect inflation. "Retail sales increase by over 20% during the Christmas period so even if we spend an additional few billion złoty in December, this should have no particular influence. If sales went up 50%, then this would really be surprising," said Jacek Wiśniewski, chief economist of Raiffeisen Bank. (Rzeczpospolita, pp. A1, B1, B2, B4, B5) M.M.