Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

There has been a no­tice­able slow­down in the num­ber of shop­pers and ac­tiv­i­ty in shop­ping ar­eas across down­town Port-of-Spain, ac­cord­ing to ven­dors and busi­nes­sown­ers in the cap­i­tal city.

De­spite this, mer­chants are op­ti­mistic that there will be a resur­gence in ac­tiv­i­ties by next week, when some peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to be paid their De­cem­ber salaries.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Home­land Fur­nish­ings on Queen Janelle Com­mis­siong Street yes­ter­day, where sales­per­son Pauline Har­bour said she no­ticed the lack of ac­tiv­i­ty for the Christ­mas sea­son thus far. Har­bour said it was a sig­nif­i­cant drop in ac­tiv­i­ty com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.

“It has been con­sis­tent­ly bor­ing. There are a lot of peo­ple com­ing in, they’re buy­ing, but it’s not the same vol­ume of peo­ple as last year. It’s to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent.

“On the week­ends, we see some ac­tiv­i­ty on Sat­ur­days, but last year was much bet­ter.

“It seems like a lot of peo­ple are watch­ing their pen­nies.”

Har­bour sug­gest­ed that some peo­ple were ex­er­cis­ing re­straint in their spend­ing habits in the lead-up to Car­ni­val.

One ven­dor at a small re­tail store on Char­lotte Street, who asked on­ly to be iden­ti­fied as Ab­dul, told Guardian Me­dia that many of the peo­ple vis­it­ing his busi­ness were do­ing so to com­pare prices, while on­ly a few were ac­tu­al­ly buy­ing items.

The store sells cloth­ing, shoes and small house­hold ap­pli­ances.

“Right now it’s dead, but maybe af­ter two weeks we may get some­thing, but it’s very dif­fi­cult.

“The cus­tomers are com­ing, but they’re watch­ing the price. A few peo­ple are buy­ing, but most peo­ple are just pass­ing through to price the goods and move on.

“Last year was good, but this year I don’t see any­thing hap­pen­ing.”

Along Char­lotte Street, sev­er­al shop­pers were seen look­ing at items on dis­play, while on­ly a few were ob­served walk­ing with bags.

The ap­par­ent lull in shop­ping was al­so ac­knowl­edged by pro­duce ven­dor Nicholas O’Gar­ro, who said de­spite the de­cline in sales, he was pre­pared to make the most of what was avail­able.

“So far it’s nor­mal ... I can’t com­plain, I didn’t give any­body mon­ey to come and buy from me, but what­ev­er small I get, I’ll take it.”

At around mid­day, sev­er­al peo­ple, in­clud­ing work­ers from near­by es­tab­lish­ments, were seen vis­it­ing strip malls along Fred­er­ick and Char­lotte Streets.

Aaliyah Mo­hammed, a pro­pri­etor of a per­fume and cologne kiosk, Pur­ple Di­a­monds at Ar­lene and Aaliyah’s Mall, said the pace of sales was high­er in the lead-up to Christ­mas, as she av­er­aged around 15 sales per day on a week­day.

“I think that lat­er on this week, things will pick up a bit.

“It’s def­i­nite­ly been a lot more ac­tive be­fore.”

On Fred­er­ick Street, one re­tail­er who asked not to be named said she was al­so hope­ful that there would be high­er ac­tiv­i­ty as the time draws near­er to Christ­mas Day, not­ing that she did not dec­o­rate the en­trance of her busi­ness­place as be­fore with goods.

“Usu­al­ly we put these small mo­torised cars and bikes out­side to at­tract cus­tomers, but I didn’t both­er to do that this year, peo­ple just aren’t buy­ing.

“By next week, I ex­pect to see some more ac­tiv­i­ty, but if peo­ple can’t af­ford to spend mon­ey, then there’s noth­ing else to do.”