PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Christ­mas sales have been slow­er this year com­pared to last year, says pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud. How­ev­er, he not­ed that there are signs sug­gest­ing a po­ten­tial turn­around in the com­ing weeks.

“It is be­ing re­port­ed across quite a few of the de­mo­graph­ic re­gions that more or less sales have shrunk some­what in com­par­i­son to the sales of 2023 to No­vem­ber 30; the re­sults are that there has been shrink­age,” said Aboud in a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

He said the drop var­ied from sec­tor to sec­tor; how­ev­er, he did see some pos­i­tive signs in down­town Port-of-Spain.

“What we have is that some sec­tors main­tain­ing their av­er­age vol­umes in com­par­i­son to last year, and some sec­tors are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing shrink­age. Port-of-Spain is hold­ing its own as a cen­tre for val­ue and as a cen­tre for va­ri­ety. The va­ri­ety and the val­ue of the city busi­ness­es is dif­fi­cult to find else­where,” he said. He al­so praised the work of the po­lice to make shop­ping in the city safer for cus­tomers.

“As far as se­cu­ri­ty is con­cerned, the city of Port-of-Spain has ben­e­fit­ted from the ac­tions of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the TTPS, with spe­cial men­tion to City Po­lice Head­quar­ters, which has been very vig­i­lant in the past. I would say in the past six to ten days, es­pe­cial­ly since the first of De­cem­ber, we have seen a per­sis­tent and con­sis­tent pres­ence of po­lice of­fi­cers in teams at key in­ter­sec­tions, and that has brought a re­al sense of com­fort and safe­ty to the pub­lic who have been com­ing to the city,” he added.

“In that sense, we are hope­ful that with a con­tin­u­a­tion of that sort of re­li­able po­lice pres­ence, the busi­ness of Port-of-Spain and down­town Port-of-Spain would con­tin­ue.”

The DO­MA pres­i­dent said there were some oth­er con­cerns he hoped would be ad­dressed through di­a­logue with the city cor­po­ra­tion, but he held an op­ti­mistic out­look for De­cem­ber sales.

“I’m hap­py to say that the TTPS’ ef­fort, the City Po­lice’s ef­fort, and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s ef­fort have been more se­ri­ous for the 2024 Christ­mas than in pre­vi­ous years. And for that, we are hope­ful and grate­ful that we will see, you know, a strong fin­ish to 2024,” he said.