The Retailers Association of India (RAI) has condemned weekend curfews and partial lockdowns being imposed in several states saying these hurt retail business and dampen consumer sentiment at a time when the retail industry is struggling to get back on its feet.
“Over 10 states continue to impose irrational weekend lockdowns. These include Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Nagaland among others,” RAI said.
RAI has submitted representations to state and local authorities requesting removal of the timing and days restrictions that have been imposed in some regions derailing smooth operations.
According to RAI, retailers clock over 45% of the week’s entire business over the weekends (Sat-Sun). After facing losses for over four months due to lockdown, retailers are depending on the weekend business to help recover from the financial stress they have been facing. However, strict weekend lockdowns, it claims, are becoming a huge setback in their path to recovery.
“It is also grossly inconvenient to customers, who after a busy workweek, wait for the weekend to do their shopping, especially in homes where both partners are working. Partial closures and keeping shops closed during weekends are detrimental to social distancing as customers have no choice but to throng stores during restricted hours,” RAI said in a statement.
It called for stores to be open on all days and for extended hours with physical distancing in place, so retailers are able to recover from the financial distress they have been facing.
A recent survey of retail businesses by RAI indicated that businesses continued to be impacted with marginal recovery observed in the month of July 2020 (-63% y-o-y) as compared to June 2020 (-67 y-o-y) after witnessing more than 80% losses in April 2020 (y-o-y). However, categories such as Apparel & Clothing (-69% y-o-y), Sports Goods (-69% y-o-y), and Beauty & Wellness (-65% y-o-y) have also not yet recovered.
Commenting on the impact of the weekend curfews, Kumar Rajagopalan – CEO, Retailers Association of India (RAI), said, “These are knee jerk reactions that are crippling the sector and gravely affecting the economy. We have urged the Centre and the States Governments to collaboratively work towards supporting the revival of the retail industry. India will always be a consumption Economy, and if retail industry suffers, it will have a rippling effect on the entire value chain which involves manufacturing, entertainment, right down to artisans and other micro-enterprises.”
“For Retailers nearly 60%-70% of costs are fixed costs - rents and salaries to employees make a large part of this cost. This, along with low margins, leaves businesses with limited flexibility that has already started leading to layoffs and downscaling or even shutting down operations widely. If the weekend business is lost then the hopeful recovery from the festive season will become a distant dream,” he added.