Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Monthly recovery of the retail sector in India, which largely comprised of MSMEs, has neared pre-Covid level for the month of February. Retail sales touched 93 per cent through the month in comparison to February 2020. From 63 per cent in July, the sector recovered in August to 52 per cent and 70 per cent in October, according to the market body Retailers Association of India’s (RAI). The association is now expecting a complete recovery in March. “There is a good possibility that the recovery in March will be 100 per cent since March 2020 was when the government enforced lockdown. Ideally, we should do more than last year’s March. However, we still need to wait-and-watch as to when retailers will start having real growth over pre-pandemic level,” Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, RAI told TheSpuzz Online.
The development came amid the increasing quantity of Covid circumstances in the nation. Five states such as Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu, continued to report a surge in the day-to-day new circumstances. 79.73 per cent of the new circumstances have been reported from these states in the previous 24 hours, Health Ministry had mentioned in a statement on Tuesday. Maharashtra reported the highest day-to-day new circumstances at 15,051 followed by Punjab with 1,818 whilst Kerala reported 1,054 new circumstances. However, RAI hoped that the existing surge will not have an effect on the recovery of the sector.
Also study: E-commerce fakes: Complaints decline 31% in FY21 this a lot of registered with National Consumer Helpline
“The challenge of pandemic in some parts of the country is still there. We hope that even if the government enforces partial lockdown, it won’t impact the consumer sentiment and the recovery,” Rajagopalan added. Meanwhile, the total vaccination coverage in India has crossed 3.29 crore with Monday witnessing the highest vaccinations in a day — more than 3 million doses.
According to the 13th edition of the Retail Business Survey by RAI, customer durables and speedy service restaurants (QSR) categories showed positive development of 15 per cent and 18 per cent year-on-year respectively in February. On the other hand, categories like footwear, beauty, wellness & private care, sports goods and meals & grocery showed “steady month-on-month recovery on a Y-o-Y comparison, signalling growth from the month of March 2021,” RAI mentioned. Moreover, recovery across regions, according to RAI, which has more than 15,000 members, showed steady improvement with Eastern India indicating positive development of 2 per cent in February whilst Southern & Northern India recovering greater with sales nearing pre-Covid-19 levels at -6 per cent and -9 per cent YoY respectively. On the other hand, Western India progressed slower at -16 per cent in February 2021.