Good morning. I'm Gloria Martín, Logista Director of Investor Relations. Welcome to this conference call and audio webcast to discuss the results of the first half of fiscal year 2021, about which you will find more details on our website. I'm joined today by Manuel Suárez, our CFO, who will lead this event. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. First, we will be answering the questions from the conference call, and after, we shall read and answer every question received in the webcast forum between the publication of the results and the end of the webcast. The document that accompanies this presentation and the observation, which will be made as it progresses, include forward-looking statements and projections concerning future results.
I invite you to read at the beginning of the document the disclaimer, which mentions the various factors that could cause the actual results to differ from the projections or forward-looking statements. I'm now handing over to Manuel Suárez. Manuel?
Thank you, Gloria, thank you to all of you joining this presentation. Logista results during the first half of 2021 made evident once more the resilience of our business model, providing specialized distribution services and integrated logistics with exclusive added-value services to satisfy customers' needs in a flexible way and through an asset-light structure. Economic sales have grown at 6% rhythm to EUR 600 million, improving in all geographical areas. Adjusted EBIT did at 23% to EUR 138 million, reaching a margin of 23%, while EBIT grew to EUR 110 million, which means a 30% improvement that is even higher at net income level, +33%, EUR 88 million. These results increases were achieved over the previous year, in which the pandemic was present just in the last comparable month.
It is clear that COVID-19 represented a negative impact in H1 2020 that we estimate between EUR 5 million and EUR 6 million, and that we consider not to be relevant altogether this year. Even discounting this effect, the growth has been a solid one. The inventory valuation represents, in this period, a positive result of EUR 3 million, while last year the impact in the same period was negative in around EUR 6 million. The development of the regular operations has made the Adjusted EBIT to grow by 10%. This growth is general in all activities and countries, with the sole exception of other businesses in France. Growth in regular operations has been reached also through careful management of our costs that, in general, grew 1.5%, while economic sales did at 5.8%. Going now through a more detailed analysis by country.
In Iberia, the revenues decreased 1%, consequence of a 6% decrease in volumes of tobacco distributed, heavily impacted by the tourism and cross-border sales due to the restrictions of the pandemic. Retail sales prices of tobacco products were generally kept stable in both periods, so there is no impact in any of them because of changes in inventory valuation. Also, manufacturers requested more services as a way to offset pandemic restrictions of most of their promotional activities. Additionally, convenience did very well as a consequence of the growth in the number of customers and its penetration because of pandemic. All this together made the figure of economic sales of this segment to be practically stable. Transport segment economic sales grew 5.7%, boosted by e-commerce development in our courier activity and were negatively affected by the demand in industrial parcel and general price pressure.
Long haul offset the impact of decreasing tobacco volumes with the incorporation of transport services for another segment and better margins. Activity in pharma grew significantly, thanks to the incorporation of new customers and the development of new services. Fighting COVID-19 has also helped Logista Pharma growth this semester. Publication business keeps in a weak situation with decreasing sales, so other businesses have grown altogether 17.6%. The operating costs grew much less than economic sales, which boosted Adjusted EBIT in Iberia to grow 17% to EUR 66 million. Revenues in France have gone up by 4.5% to EUR 2 billion due to the good behavior of volumes, +0.7%, and increases in tobacco retail sales prices. During this semester took place the last increase designed by the French government to take the price of a pack of cigarettes to EUR 10.
This tax increase was not totally followed by tobacco manufacturers increases prices correspondingly. There was a negative effect in the valuation of our inventories of EUR 2 million. That compares with a negative effect of around EUR 3 million in the same period of last year. Electronic transactions and convenience products sold to the tobacconist network showed also a good trend and, consequence of all this, economic sales of tobacco related increased by 5.8%. The wholesale activity in other channels and tobacconists showed, however, decreases of 8% in economic sales, being this business very affected by the anti-COVID measures. Operating costs grew 2%, two points less than the growth in economic sales, which made the EBIT grow by 32% to EUR 29 million. Revenues in Italy grew 11% to EUR 1,653 million due to the increase of prices of tobacco products and the development of convenience sales.
This market is characterized by the good performance of NGP category, whose growth offset the 4.7% reduction of cigarettes. The positive effect in the period of tax price movements was around EUR 5 million. That compares with a negative effect of EUR 3 million last year. This, together with the growth in convenience product distribution and services to manufacturers, made the economic sales to grow by 9%, reaching EUR 158 million. Total cost increased 4.2%. That boosted EBIT to EUR 50 million, plus 20% on year 2020. This semester is marked on one side by higher activity that is more important in economic sales than in revenues, reflecting the capacity of the company to develop additional services on distributed products. Main factors behind the growth in revenues are tobacco distribution and prices in Italy and France and convenience in Spain and Italy.