Norwegians increase cross-border shopping in Sweden

OSLO, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Norway's cross-border shopping increased by almost one quarter during a recent period of 12 months as Norwegians spend more money on meat, beer and other Swedish goods, newspaper Aftenposten reported Friday.

During the popular shopping in neighboring Sweden, locally known as "Harry Tur", Norwegians spent 15.8 billion kroner (1.9 billion U.S. dollars) from the last quarter of 2016 until end of September this year, making it 23.4 percent more than the previous four quarters, the report said.

"Now the limit is reached, literally! We can not sit passively and look at the fact that thousands of jobs and billions of tax and duty kroner are being exported to Sweden," said Harald Andersen, director of Virke, the Enterprise Federation of Norway.

Norwegians traveled abroad for shopping 8.4 million times during the above-mentioned period, showing an increase by 14.2 percent.

This, however, is much less than the increase of the shopping itself, which leads to conclusion that people spent much more money per trip than before.

"The border shopping has an impact on the whole Norwegian food value chain; from farmers, to food producers and shops. This influences directly Norwegian jobs, in addition to the fact that the state loses revenue from duties on the purchased goods," it was stated on Virke's website. Enditem