Bulgaria turned out to be among the EU countries to register the steepest declines in retail sales in November, registering a 5.2% slide on an annual basis, data by Eurostat showed on Thursday.

Romania was the single state to witness a sharpest annual slump of 8.9% in retail sales in the period, according to the bloc's statistics office.

By comparison, EU countries saw an average 0.8% drop in retail trade volumes in the eleventh month of 2010 compared with the same period of 2009, while eurozone members registered a modest decrease of 0.1%.

The results are far from experts' projections, as they predicted a rise in retail sales for November.

EU countries to witness a decline in retail sales were also Spain, Ireland and Portugal, which are currently undergoing the implementation of stringent measures for cutting their budget gaps.

The highest annual increase in retail sales was recorded in Poland, Latvia and Estonia.