A des­per­ate call has gone out to Gov­ern­ment from re­tail­ers to re­open the sec­tor as soon as pos­si­ble.

Un­able to cope with bur­geon­ing debt, mas­sive loss­es in prof­its and sav­ings con­tin­u­ous­ly be­ing eat­en away re­tail con­tin­ues to be crip­pled un­der Gov­ern­ment’s con­tin­u­ous re­stric­tions.

Busi­ness­man Omar Hadeed, who said he’s the voice of the re­cent­ly formed Re­tail­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, said close to 20 per cent of re­tail­ers have closed and an­oth­er 20 to 25 per cent are al­so ex­pect­ed to shut their doors by the end of this month if the green light is not giv­en “in a mat­ter of days.”

Not­ing that re­tail has been “dis­sem­i­nat­ed” over the past 15 months Hadeed, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of First Re­tail Inc, paint­ed a grim fu­ture of the sec­tor to the Busi­ness Guardian if so­lu­tions are not im­ple­ment­ed now.

“It’s been a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od over the past year for most re­tail­ers who have just been do­ing their best to sur­vive. Their cash flow would have been de­plet­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly go­ing in­to this present lock­down,” Hadeed ex­plained.

Fur­ther, since re­tail is a sea­son­al busi­ness Hadeed said im­por­tant pe­ri­ods-Moth­er’s and Fa­ther’s Day and back-to-school sales-have been missed due to clo­sures.

“Most of us are now on the verge of col­lapse and that is not an ex­ag­ger­a­tion,” Hadeed re­it­er­at­ed.

This al­so has a rip­pling ef­fect on staff.

Ac­cord­ing to Hadeed there have been com­plaints by some em­ploy­ees that no salary re­lief grants have been is­sued for April, May and June.

He added that many are sin­gle par­ents who are strug­gling to make ends meet, some of whom may not be able to send their chil­dren to school as they can­not pur­chase sup­plies or af­ford pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

‘These par­ents ur­gent­ly need to get back out to work,” Hadeed em­pha­sised.

Say­ing that the sec­tor em­ploys thou­sands of peo­ple, Hadeed said the con­tin­ued clo­sure im­pacts not just the re­tail sec­tor but has a knock on ef­fect on the sup­ply and dis­tri­b­u­tion in­dus­try, which may al­so nev­er ful­ly re­cov­er as that seg­ment has al­so been dras­ti­cal­ly im­pact­ed.

“Think about the many land­lords with oblig­a­tions to their banks who can­not col­lect rent from their re­tail ten­ants and the in­abil­i­ty to do so the longer they re­main closed.

“We are lit­er­al­ly reach­ing that point where most can no longer sus­tain this,” Hadeed added.

In giv­ing his own ac­count of how the re­stric­tions have im­pact­ed his busi­ness­es, Hadeed ex­plained that like every oth­er non-es­sen­tial re­tail­er he’s hurt­ing.

“We have had ze­ro in­come now go­ing on four months and ex­pens­es con­tin­ue to com­pound. It’s not like switch­ing off a tap,” Hadeed said, adding that he al­so as­sists his staff, some of whom have young chil­dren to care for.

Health and safe­ty pro­to­cols play an in­te­gral part in re­open­ing.

Hadeed said while mem­bers are re­spect­ful of the safe­guards put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19, the ma­jor­i­ty of the sec­tor has al­ready been vac­ci­nat­ed and there­fore, ful­ly ready to op­er­ate.

Hadeed said about 65 per cent of em­ploy­ees have been vac­ci­nat­ed to date and many more are ex­pect­ed to do so.

“Giv­en these high vac­ci­na­tion rates the Gov­ern­ment should vac­ci­nate as ear­ly as next week. On­line or curb­side will not be eco­nom­i­cal at this time and it will not em­ploy a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of staff,” Hadeed said, not­ing that a large por­tion of SMEs in T&T do not have on­line plat­forms.

At a re­cent post Cab­i­net news brief­ing in To­ba­go, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said re­tail stores will be in the next large group in the re­open­ing of the lo­cal econ­o­my.

How­ev­er, he did not give a time­line on when that could po­ten­tial­ly be.

With a mem­ber­ship of 125 re­tail­ers and grow­ing Hadeed ex­plained that con­ver­sa­tion about form­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion be­gan last year when the pan­dem­ic first be­gan with dis­cus­sions al­so in­clud­ing sev­er­al cham­bers.

Clo­sure un­sus­tain­able

Sev­er­al re­tail­ers like Ex­cel­lent Stores, has in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in trans­form­ing a large part of their busi­ness­es to on­line op­tions.

But they have been ren­dered im­po­tent sim­ply be­cause they are forced to re­main shut.

The irony how­ev­er, is that for­eign con­glom­er­ates like Ama­zon con­tin­ue to rake in huge sales from T&T.

This, CEO of Ex­cel­lent Stores, Alex Siu Chong said is not on­ly un­fair but one which the Gov­ern­ment must im­me­di­ate­ly ad­dress.

In 2020, Ex­cel­lent Stores closed its flag­ship branch in Port-of-Spain as the com­pa­ny made a bold step in its strate­gic plan to­wards ag­gres­sive in­te­gra­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, by ac­cel­er­at­ing its dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and store op­ti­mi­sa­tion ini­tia­tives, both in-store and on­line.

The com­pa­ny said these changes will al­low for more ef­fi­cien­cy by us­ing its lim­it­ed for­eign ex­change sup­ply to pro­cure the right prod­ucts at the right time and pro­vide the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­hance its ser­vice de­liv­ery, lo­gis­tics, in-store in­no­va­tions, and e-com­merce in­te­gra­tion at its re­main­ing phys­i­cal lo­ca­tions.

Like Hadeed, Siu Chong un­der­scored the need to re­open the sec­tor, adding that on­line and even curb­side op­tions will al­so help keep some en­ti­ties afloat.

“I am not al­lowed to open yet peo­ple are still al­lowed to go to Ama­zon and bring those pack­ages in. This con­tin­ue to per­pet­u­ate a for­eign ex­change prob­lem be­cause mon­ey con­tin­ues to go out and this is a time where we need mon­ey to stay in the coun­try.

“This is to­tal­ly counter-in­tu­itive,” Siu Chong said.

Fur­ther, even though busi­ness­es are closed tax­es must still be paid.

Ex­cel­lent has no in­come com­ing in yet Siu Chong said he con­tin­ues to pay his VAT, du­ties, cor­po­rate tax, busi­ness and green fund levy, oth­er statu­to­ry pay­ments, util­i­ty bills and oth­er over­head costs.

“But yet I can­not op­er­ate. Our process­es and sys­tems are very con­tact­less be­cause we have been do­ing this for a long time. Noth­ing of this makes any sense.

“Our cus­tomer don’t un­der­stand it, our man­agers don’t un­der­stand it, our staff don’t un­der­stand it but yet if peo­ple need to or­der any­thing they can go to Ama­zon and bring it in,” Siu Chong added.

He al­so not­ed that freight cost from Chi­na and oth­er parts of the world have tip­pled cou­pled with the short­age of some goods.

And while it is still too ear­ly to pre­dict the fu­ture of his stores, Siu Chong, how­ev­er, said if the sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ues, like oth­er com­pa­nies he too can “go down the pipes.”

“We just can­not af­ford to con­tin­ue like this. We have maxed out all our cred­it fa­cil­i­ties. Last year we had a good year by man­ag­ing debt, over­draft and cash flow and sell­ing what was in our ware­hous­es but that good year has been to­tal­ly wiped out by no sales, sup­port­ing our staff, pay­ing the Gov­ern­ment down to the last cent and noth­ing com­ing back in,” Siu Chong added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said many of his man­agers have not tak­en a salary in months, forc­ing every one to dip in­to their sav­ings.

Fur­ther, bank de­fer­rals, do not help, as this equates to adding in­ter­est up­on in­ter­est which busi­ness­es sim­ply can­not re­pay.

Like oth­er busi­ness­es Siu Chong said his em­ploy­ees are vac­cine com­pli­ant.

And to main­tain health guide­lines, he rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment in­struct health in­spec­tors to check up on stores.

Clive Fletch­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Ltd said like Ex­cel­lent Stores, Courts can make on­line sales, how­ev­er, re­mains to­tal­ly closed and there­fore un­able to de­liv­er goods.

“It’s very tough be­cause we are not op­er­at­ing. We are closed for three months now and it’s ex­tend­ed and there’s no prop­er end in sight.

“We would like to ob­vi­ous­ly open the en­tire busi­ness but in the mean­time all we have been ask­ing for is to be able to de­liv­er our on­line sales,” Fletch­er added.