The melo­di­ous strains of so­ca parang blar­ing from boom box­es strate­gi­cal­ly placed out­side the var­i­ous stores beck­on shop­pers seek­ing bar­gains for Christ­mas.

From the busy city cen­tres to ven­dors hawk­ing their goods on road­ways through­out the coun­try, deals are of­fered all in the hope of monies to be ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from sales.

Amid the hus­tle and bus­tle, how­ev­er, are peo­ple re­al­ly spend­ing mon­ey for the Yule­tide Sea­son?

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to var­i­ous en­ti­ties to get a sense of how sales have been go­ing thus far, with less than two weeks to go be­fore Christ­mas Day.

The gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that sales are slow but there is the ex­pec­ta­tion busi­ness will in­crease clos­er to Christ­mas Day.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud shared some fig­ur­ers for Port-of-Spain.

“So far, from the re­ports that we have re­ceived, the in­di­ca­tions are that busi­ness for Christ­mas 2023 is run­ning in down­town Port-of-Spain ap­prox­i­mate­ly be­tween 50 to 10 per cent less that it was at this time in 2022,” Aboud said.

How­ev­er, he said the cap­i­tal is still main­tain­ing its place as a des­ti­na­tion for shop­pers, adding that many of the ma­jor re­tail­ers in­clud­ing fur­ni­ture, ap­pli­ance, foot­ware and home fur­nish­ings have a tremen­dous as­sort­ment of goods to of­fer.

On whether he be­lieves that sales would pick up with the ex­pect­ed back­pay to be paid out to pub­lic ser­vants on De­cem­ber 19, Aboud said, “While it is true that every­one would like to see an im­prove­ment in sales vol­umes, it is al­so true that per­sons re­ceiv­ing their back­pay should mea­sure what per­cent­age is spent and what per­cent­age is saved and we should not be en­cour­ag­ing per­sons to go on a spend­ing spree with all of their back­pay,” Aboud ad­vised.

Mean­while, Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (EBMA) and vice-pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments of slow sales at this time.

To en­tice shop­pers, the EBMA has put in place an in­no­v­a­tive project called, “Ah Grande Christ­mas,” an­oth­er brain child from the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“We suc­cess­ful­ly host­ed ‘Ah taste of Grande’ in the past which has boost­ed the food in­dus­try and lo­cal tourism for the San­gre Grande dis­trict fol­lowed by the es­tab­lish­ment of the Grande’s food hub, an­oth­er main at­trac­tion.

“The main pur­pose is to in­crease lo­calised shop­ping for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and ven­dors with­in the town dur­ing the Christ­mas pe­ri­od while giv­ing a safe, late night shop­ping with Christ­mas ac­tiv­i­ties. The EBMA has al­so en­gaged the sup­port from the Po­lice Ser­vice for safe­ty for all the week­ends lead­ing up to Christ­mas,” Mo­hammed ex­plained.

In Gas­par­il­lo there is al­so lit­tle cus­tomer spend.

Samuel George of the Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber not­ed that cus­tomers are a bit ap­pre­hen­sive and even afraid to come out and open­ly shop, ow­ing to the preva­lence of crime and a lack of po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty and joint pa­trols in that area.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said in­fla­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly of food, has been push­ing prices up to un­rea­son­able lev­els which re­mains a big prob­lem for the salaried work­ing class.

Chair­man of the CR­BC, Vivek Char­ran re­mains more hope­ful.

He fore­sees that as the full swing of the Christ­mas sea­son draws clos­er, peo­ple would in fact, spend their mon­ey.

“This year, the sea­son is qui­et thus far. Re­ports from the high streets say sales are mut­ed. Last year it was not as qui­et but now even the traf­fic in the roads has di­min­ished con­sid­er­ably even with schools be­ing closed. The pos­si­ble rea­sons are that pub­lic ser­vants are be­ing paid quite late which is around De­cem­ber 19.

“But all in all, cur­rent­ly there has not been an in­crease in shop­pers ei­ther at the com­mer­cial dis­tricts or at the malls,” Char­ran added.

Like Aboud, he is al­so urg­ing peo­ple to be pru­dent with their mon­ey.

“While we are a last-minute so­ci­ety, when it comes to Christ­mas shop­ping, buy­ing a lit­tle every week is the smarter fi­nan­cial move than wait­ing to spend as much as pos­si­ble at the last minute,” Char­ran sug­gest­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the CR­BC chair­man, cus­tomers are pri­ori­tis­ing food items first, adding that many are al­so an­tic­i­pat­ing high­er prices at the su­per­mar­kets.

With gro­ceries out of the way, they could then de­ter­mine how much can be al­lo­cat­ed to oth­er items.

Re­gard­ing the cost of oth­er nov­el­ty Christ­mas prod­ucts like toys, Char­ran said busi­nes­sown­ers are try­ing to keep the prices of these goods down as much as pos­si­ble, de­spite the ris­ing in­fla­tion lev­els.

“So prices can be as com­pet­i­tive for li­censed prod­ucts for ex­am­ple, like Dis­ney Has­bro toys, but the costs can be high­er be­cause of a glob­al price in­crease for many elec­tron­ic items, like game con­soles and games. How­ev­er, Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tion prices have al­so not in­creased nei­ther have Xmas trees,” Char­ran added.

Down in the south­land, sales are re­port­ed to be dras­ti­cal­ly down.

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SBA), Daphne Bartlett stat­ed that this Christ­mas sales are worse, not­ing that they are down by 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

She at­trib­uted this part­ly to un­em­ploy­ment, which she de­scribed as a “deep prob­lem” in San Fer­nan­do and oth­er sur­round­ing south­ern com­mu­ni­ties, be­cause of the clo­sure of Petrotrin and Trin­mar.

The SBA Pres­i­dent fur­ther lament­ed that with­out an in­come, one can­not spend.

Re­gard­ing pop­u­lar Christ­mas goods like lights, cur­tains and table­cloths, she said these have in­creased this year and in some cas­es by as much as 20 per cent.

Re­gard­ing cus­tomer traf­fic, Bartlett not­ed that while there may be an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple brows­ing, they are not nec­es­sar­i­ly shop­ping.

“Peo­ple are very care­ful in what they are buy­ing and try­ing to get the best deal pos­si­ble,” she added.

Re­gard­ing eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties in the south, Bartlett rec­om­mend­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley should seek ways to restart the re­fin­ery to cre­ate em­ploy­ment es­pe­cial­ly for south Trinidad.

“This would open up more eco­nom­ic spaces with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor and take our na­tion to­wards eco­nom­ic growth,” Bartlett added.

Pres­i­dent of the Siparia Cham­ber, Emer­son Chadee agreed with Bartlett that while cus­tomer traf­fic may have in­creased, there has been no uptick in sales.

“I have been notic­ing that prices of food and oth­er house­hold goods have in­creased, and the buy­ing pub­lic is very cau­tious about their spend­ing for this Christ­mas.

“I can­not blame per­sons for be­ing cau­tions about their fi­nan­cial re­sources but I en­cour­age the res­i­dents of Siparia, as far as pos­si­ble, to sup­port the mer­chants in their com­mu­ni­ty to stim­u­late as much lo­cal eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty as pos­si­ble,” Chadee added.

Fur­ther, he en­cour­aged shop­pers to sup­port lo­cal busi­ness­es say­ing the small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es of­fer qual­i­ty goods year round.