Later Easter boosts Cyprus credit card spending in April

Amid the gloom of the real estate statistics a brief glimmer of hope came with the data on local credit card spending in April, which showed a rise of 16% over the year earlier to EUR 164,284,290 , or EUR 164.3 mln.
However, the euphoria was shortlived, as the credit card JCC company pointed out that the growth in April spending was affected by the dates of Easter in 2010 (April 4) and 2011 (April 24).
Last year, because Easter fell at the beginning of April, some of those thousands of eggs for painting, chickens for boiling, and cheese for flaounes, will have been bought in late March.
However, this year, because Easter fell towards the end of the month, they will mainly have been bought in April.
This will have made the whole of April 2011 a bumper month for food sales, rather than only part of April like last year.
So we shall not really know if we can celebrate better days until we have seen all the data for May.
By that time it will nearly be Pentecost, so both the Easter season and the seasonal effect of Easter will be behind us.

Fiona Mullen
www.sapientaeconomics.com