While some sub­ur­ban shop­ping cen­tres re­port­ed an in­crease in hol­i­day spend­ing, Port-of-Spain stores re­port­ed a de­cline in sales for the 2021 Christ­mas sea­son when com­pared to last year.

This was con­firmed by the pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud. 

Aboud said shop­ping malls on the out­skirts of the cap­i­tal had equal or slight­ly high­er sale vol­umes this year.

“Over­all there has been a de­cline and this is sig­nif­i­cant for peo­ple in towns and cities but there is news cir­cu­lat­ing that sub­ur­ban cen­tres ex­pe­ri­enced equal or slight in­creas­es in vol­umes. The sit­u­a­tion is not with­out our un­der­stand­ing be­cause we recog­nise the dif­fi­cul­ties that con­sumers face in park­ing and traf­fic in get­ting to and from the ma­jor towns and cities,” Aboud said.

He added that shop­ping ar­eas in Aranguez, El So­cor­ro, as well as the busi­ness­es on the south­bound Uri­ah But­ler High­way, have been a bee­hive of ac­tiv­i­ties.

Aboud al­so not­ed that peo­ple had less spend­ing mon­ey this year com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

“Af­ter peo­ple went to the gro­cery, they didn’t have much left over for oth­er spend­ing as they did in oth­er years. We have to be hon­est and say there is some move­ment in prices but we are still a very com­pet­i­tive des­ti­na­tion in terms of the ba­sic items and most prod­ucts that peo­ple buy whether it is hard­ware or gro­cery sup­plies. We com­pare very favourably when com­pared to oth­er is­lands,” Aboud added.

How­ev­er, in San Fer­nan­do, the pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Ki­ran Singh re­port­ed an over­all in­crease in sales in the city.

“This year there was a heav­ier traf­fic flow of cus­tomers in­to the stores. There was no avail­able park­ing in the city and the num­bers of cus­tomers en­ter­ing busi­ness places not just on High Street but al­so on Mu­cu­rapo Street, Cipero Street, Pointe-a-Pierre Road, all of these stores re­port­ed in­creas­es as peo­ple came out to take ad­van­tage of the fan­tas­tic deals and pro­mo­tions that were of­fered,” Singh said.

He added that the hottest sell­ing items were elec­tron­ics, bi­cy­cles and elec­tron­ic toys.

“De­vices in­clud­ing phones and tablets re­mained on the top of the list of shop­pers this year,” Singh added.

He not­ed that ap­pli­ances and fur­ni­ture sales de­creased this year.

“We saw an in­crease in the pur­chase of cloth­ing and footwear on Box­ing Day as sev­er­al stores of­fered deals and dis­counts,” Singh said.

Asked what was re­spon­si­ble for bumper sales, Singh said May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo halt­ed wreck­ing dur­ing Christ­mas week so cus­tomers were al­lowed to park for free on the Prom­e­nade.

“We are grate­ful that the May­or of­fered free park­ing and no wreck­ing. The very ef­fi­cient wreck­ing ser­vices were re­laxed for the sea­son and this went a long way to help the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty,” Singh added.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the T&T Cham­ber Gabriel Faria said he did not have any spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion on com­par­a­tive sales da­ta for this Christ­mas ver­sus last year.

How­ev­er, he said he was very sur­prised at the surge of shop­ping on Box­ing Day.

“It’s ex­treme­ly im­por­tant that both con­sumers and busi­ness­es op­er­ate re­spon­si­bly as the po­ten­tial risk of sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es in (COVID) in­fec­tions and deaths could mean in­creased re­stric­tions in the new year,” he said.

He added, “My ad­vice is to re­strict move­ment and phys­i­cal en­gage­ments as much as pos­si­ble as every cit­i­zen is play­ing Russ­ian roulette with their lives and their fam­i­lies’ lives based on the high lev­el of deaths we are see­ing.” 

Faria not­ed that while the vac­ci­nat­ed had a bet­ter chance of sur­viv­ing in­fec­tion they could still trans­mit it to their fam­i­lies and co-work­ers so it was im­por­tant to fol­low the rec­om­mend­ed health pro­to­cols.