December crucial for retail industry, says Shun Tak director

2014/12/9

From:Macau Business Daily

Retail industry receipts increased by 24 per cent year-on-year in 2013, according to the latest data by DSEC. Whether this good performance can be maintained may rely on December retail sales – if they can overcome the slight drop in receipts registered the third quarter of the year, the general director of the Shopping Festival Organising Committee 2014, Vincent Tung, perceives.
“Retail sales in the first half [of the year] registered a slight growth [in receipts]. Meanwhile, the growth of receipts of retail sales in the third quarter was almost flat,” Mr. Tung, who is also director of group marketing at Shun Tak Holdings Limited, told Business Daily in a phone interview yesterday.
Mr. Tung said the performance of the year will now totally rely on sales in the last month of the year, and whether big-amount transactions will return. “The flow of customers remains large but the number of high rollers has decreased. As such, the number of transactions was still high but the value of the transactions dropped.”
He agreed that decling gaming revenues as well as the central government’s anti-graft campaign are the chief factors influencing the sales of the industry.
In fact, DSEC data shows that retail sales of jewellery, watches and clocks were the only items to record declines in their sales in the first nine months of the year. During the third quarter, the sales of these products even dropped by 15 per cent year-on-year.
Meanwhile, the total receipts of the industry dropped slightly by one per cent year-on-year in the third quarter. However, during the first nine months of the year, the MOP50.56 billion receipts of the industry were still some MOP2.8 billion more than the same period of 2013.

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