SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Ch­agua­nas busi­ness­men say they are not ex­pect­ing the re­tail sec­tor to pick up overnight, as the re­tail sec­tor across the coun­try of­fi­cial­ly re­opened to­day, af­ter be­ing closed for quite a while be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Stores in the Cen­tral Bor­ough opened up as ear­ly as 8 am along the Main Road.  How­ev­er, there was on­ly a trick­le of cus­tomers. 

Store man­ag­er Vish­nu Char­ran, who runs the Char­ran’s Plaza op­po­site the Ch­agua­nas Mar­ket, said it may take a year be­fore sales re­turn to pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els.

Char­ran ob­served that peo­ple sim­ply do not have the dis­pos­able in­come like be­fore. He said things were slow in the book­store sec­tion for a back-to-school sea­son

“Dis­pos­able in­come is not there for a lot of peo­ple.  The re­tail sec­tor opened this morn­ing, and we ex­pect to see a lot of peo­ple out there. How­ev­er, it is not go­ing to be that in­flow of peo­ple many hope to see,” Char­ran said. 

“Peo­ple may look for the ne­ces­si­ties. I ex­pect things to be quite slow.  It's nev­er go­ing to get back to the lev­el it was be­fore, and busi­ness­es need to rec­og­nize that and plan their busi­ness ac­cord­ing­ly,” he added.

Shop­pers told Guardian Me­dia that they were most­ly shop­ping for shoes and un­der gar­ments.

A 40-year-old woman from Char­lieville told us:

“I have to buy shoes and un­der­wear; these are things I must get. I don’t have a lot of mon­ey to buy new clothes. There are re­al­ly no oc­ca­sions to at­tend. I have my work clothes and the few clothes I have at home. Two of my chil­dren are job­less be­cause of the pan­dem­ic and I have to sup­port them. Every day is a strug­gle.”

Busi­ness was al­so slow at the malls.

Richie Sookhai, Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) said 80 per­cent of busi­ness­es are opened with work­ers op­er­at­ing on a shift ba­sis.

“It is pret­ty slow right now, just as the restau­rant sec­tor took a lit­tle while and is still try­ing to re­cov­er,” he told Guardian Me­dia, fol­low­ing a tour of the area around mid-day by CCIC ex­ec­u­tives.

Sookhai points out the spend­ing pow­er of con­sumers has been slashed and many con­sumers are be­ing cau­tious with their monies, as school is set to open next month.

Dr Valmik­ki Ar­joon, CCIC ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, said some per­sons who have a steady in­come would have a pent-up de­mand for goods, while those who have lost in­come would show a low­er de­mand for goods.

“Their re­cov­ery would be hing­ing on their abil­i­ty to ac­quire their jobs or ac­quire new jobs, some­thing that is not go­ing to hap­pen overnight,” Dr Ar­joon ex­plained.

He said a more ag­gres­sive dri­ve is need­ed by the Gov­ern­ment to push the SME loan fa­cil­i­ty now that the Gov­ern­ment has agreed to ful­ly back these loans.

“That is go­ing to ease their [SME] fi­nan­cial stress and give them the pow­er to re­hire per­sons,” Dr Ar­joon said.

He al­so rec­om­mends that Gov­ern­ment look at Grant Fund­ing in­stead of loans, and says var­i­ous busi­ness­es cham­bers should start part­ner­ing with the IADB to re-ed­u­cate busi­ness­es to change their busi­ness mod­el, to take ad­van­tage of in­ter­net mar­ket­ing.