Shops will reopen after four months and should not be in need of customers

Slovakia will switch to the dark red tier in the Covid-19 automat warning system on April 19, meaning that several anti-pandemic measures will be lifted.

Investment Advisory Guide - Your key to understanding the Slovak business environment (source: Investment Guide)

This includes the reopening of non-essential shops that have been closed since the second half of December. The only opened shops included groceries, pharmacies and the chemist's, while garden centres opened in early February.

Dispensing points helped

Since last December, many shops have been working as dispensing points for goods ordered via online shops.

The solution was not sufficient to reaching usual profits and most of the shops reported an annual drop in revenues during this period, said Eva Sadovská, analyst with WOOD & Company. This has also been confirmed by the Statistics Office data.