Looks like the woes of Indian retail industry are not over yet!
According to the country’s retail trade association that represents the rights of Indian offline and online retailers, the Retailers Association of India (RAI) on Tuesday stated that the weekend curfews and partial lockdowns across several states in the country are hugely impacting retail business and consumer sentiment.
Indian states including Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Nagaland among others continue to impose ‘irrational weekend lockdowns’.
Weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) are extremely crucial for retailers as far as sales are concerned, as more than 45 per cent of the week’s entire business happens over the two days, RAI underlined.
And now especially after over 4 months of nationwide lockdown, owing to which the retailers had to undergo huge business losses, they are depending on the weekend sales to ‘recover from the financial stress they have been facing’.
Weekend lockdowns have left shoppers with no other option but to visit stores during restricted hours, which is ‘detrimental to social distancing’.
RAI strongly advocated that the lockdown must be lifted and stores must be permitted to open on all days and for extended hours with immediate effect.
“Only this will help retailers crawl back from the financial distress they have been facing,” it added.
Considering the sad state that is gravely affecting the economy, RAI CEO Kumar Rajagopalan mentioned that the association has “urged the Centre and the State Governments to collaboratively work towards supporting the revival of the retail industry.”
