Festive Sales Jingle all the way. Or part of the way, anyway.
There will be growth – oh, yes, there will be growth – but it will not achieve the astral levels of 2011, according to the blind crone over at the South African Council of Shopping Centres. Last year, you will remember with a fond tear in your eye, December sales were up 12.8% year-on-year. This year, however, the sibilantly-acronymed SACSC believe it’s going to be somewhere in the region of an inflation-pipping 7 or 9%, for a total somewhere just north of R80billion. “Why?” you plead, “Why not more?” It’s like this. The state of the local and global economy has gotten everyone a little skittish, and punters are being assailed on all sides by non-retail inflationary pressures, for eg: school fees (9%), petrol (17%), electricity (10%) water and services (9%) and public transport (15%).
Comment: So let us be grateful for the 7% – 9% we’re going to get.