This year’s festive season was slow compared to previous years – GRTU CEO
Karl Azzopardi
The CEO of the GRTU – Malta’s Chamber of SMEs Abigail Mamo has revealed that the festive season hasn’t been too kind to businesses in Malta when compared to previous years.
In the first week of December a study was conducted by the GRTU which showed that 65% of businesses reported plummeting sales, with 15% of the respondents experiencing a drop of more than 50% in sales. These numbers were surprising as they were even worse than the ones experienced during the EU recession in 2008, Mamo had told The Malta Independent during an interview earlier on in December.
When asked on whether sales have managed to recover closer to Christmas day, Mamo said that shopping has picked up and the situation has improved. However, despite this increase in sales, “overall it seems that this year’s festive season will be a slow season when compared to previous years”.
With 2018 being one of the most profitable years for Malta, expectations were high for 2019 especially during this time of year. For this reason, businesses all over Malta hoped that Black Friday would bring the sales back up as it did during the previous year. In fact, there was a visible increase in the amount of adverts released for Black Friday and Christmas. Unfortunately, their dreams weren’t realised as the recovery they sought wasn’t achieved.
Mamo expressed that the December deficit came as a cause of the political crisis that overtook the Maltese Islands during the month of November. “The national political crises that started in mid-November has led consumers to be more cautious, starting their shopping later, also effecting directly the Black Friday sales (29 November). Decisive and timely action from our political leaders was lacking and the desired action could have spared a rough period for many business owners during the most important time of the year.”
In addition to the political crisis, Mamo stated that “the episode of electricity outage, which happened on one of the most important festive days for shopping, further worsened the situation as it forced businesses to close or delay opening, and to cancel scheduled appointments”.
The GRTU has noted that in order to counter these unfortunate events “certain businesses chose to start their sales on Boxing Day, rather than waiting until the first week of January as is more common. However, we cannot, as of yet, establish whether this was as a result of the decrease in sales noted in the beginning of December”.
There are plans for a new survey to be conducted by the Malta Chamber of SMEs later on this month. The survey will give a clearer perspective on the outcome of businesses and if they managed to recover from the first drop in sales experienced in December.