– business sector cautious, spending power may not be there
A lacklustre start to the accustomed pre-Christmas consumer spending has left both the downtown business community and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) cautious as to whether or not the commercial sector can recoup some of the ground lost in a year which saw a significant reduction in disposable income among working class Guyanese.
“The evidence we are seeing so far is that the money isn’t there,” GCCI President Chandradat Chintamani told Stabroek Business in an interview earlier this week. “This year we have seen both salaried workers and people in the private sector take a hit. Sugar– apart from the fact that the industry has not been doing well anyway – has been affected by industrial action. We have seen rice farmers being stretched out by millers in terms of payment for their paddy while as far as traditional wage earners are concerned official promises of a public sector pay increase in 2009 are yet to bear fruit. Public servants are among the largest groups of seasonal consumers and whatever increase is to come their way has to be paid long before December 25th,” Chintamani said.
The GCCI President’s assessment of the trading climate ahead of Christmas 2009 is largely consistent with this newspaper’s assessment based on the ‘soundings’ of merchants in downtown Georgetown. Earlier this week Stabroek Business visited at least a dozen business places on Regent and Water streets where owners and shop attendants alike were all expressing anxiety over the failure so far for a groundswell of Christmas shoppers to emerge. “It’s hard to tell,” a Regent Street businessman told Stabroek Business. “This time last year we already had the crowds in. Perhaps spenders had an even worse year than we thought.”
Several cargo containers encumbering the parapet along Regent street point to an aggressive stocking up ahead of Christmas. Chintamani says that he is not surprised. “Having said that I do not believe that the money is there one has to bear in mind that this is the season when the commercial sector realizes as much as 80 per cent of their turnover in some cases. Obviously, no one wants to take a chance of being down on stock in the event that there is a late surge of shopping.”
That, the GCCI President says, will only happen if consumer liquidity improves. “Personally, I would like to see the promised increase paid to public servants sooner rather than later and we also need to have rice millers paying their debts to the farmers so that they can reinvest in the industry,” he says.
At a downtown department store an anxious employee told Stabroek Business that for the past two weeks there had been talk of temporary layoffs. “We definitely have not seen any sign of early Christmas shoppers. The longer it takes for them to appear the greater the chances that there will be some amount of job losses. I have heard that some people may be without jobs at least during the holiday period,” the store attendant said.
Up to Wednesday of this week the city pavements appeared conspicuously unencumbered either by vendors or shoppers. “I’m still hopeful,” a vendor offering items of clothing and slippers said. She is one of several stallholders occupying the New Vendors Arcade opposite the bank which was opened by much aplomb a few weeks ago. She told Stabroek Business that business at the new facility remained slow. “We have to find a way of getting people accustomed to coming into the Mall.” Meanwhile, she continues to do some amount of trading from the pavement, hedging her best just in case Christmas is a disappointment.
Year-end remittance flows are usually a reasonably reliable barometer of the likely level of Christmas spending and while the Chamber President told Guyana Review two weeks ago that the word from the leading cambios is that remittance levels are up on this time last year he has no figures with which to make his case. Like the Stabroek Business he too frowns on the stubborn refusal by the Bank of Guyana to release figures on remittance flows into the public domain.
