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Let's Pull Together. Pledge for 50/3.


Hong Kong is experiencing an unprecedented crisis with the outbreak of SARS and has affected the lives of all Hong Kong people as well as all key service industries and our tourism trade. Retailers, being one of the most hard hit among all. The Hong Kong Retail Management Association is very concerned with our current situation as local consumption including tourist spending has been much affected with overall retail sales plunging more than 50% since the outbreak.

As an Association, we are therefore inviting all retail property owners and landlords to be sympathetic to this plight on retailers by lending their assistance in helping retailers ride through this extraordinary difficult period. We are urging landlords to give a temporary rental reduction of 50% for 3 months to include related management fees and air-con charges. We are also urging utility companies to give the same reduction. Retailers are desperately in need of this rental relief so that they could survive through this crisis to avoid a lot of them going out of business and more people facing unemployment.

Since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, Hong Kong's retail industry has been hard hit. Today, we are still experiencing weak consumer spending, a deflationary environment and high unemployment. The Total Retail Sales for 2002 was recorded as HK$176,859 million according to government's statistics. In terms of value and volume, it has been a drop of 4.1% & 2.6% respectively when compared with 2001. However, in reviewing the past few years, total retail sales value has dropped an astonishing 26% to date from 1997 levels. We are not seeing any retail recovery yet. Retailers are under the pressure of very tight margins and very high operating costs. Namely, still unaffordable high rental levels in Hong Kong, very high related management fees, air-con charges and rising utility and fuel costs. Local spending has been further dampened by last year's World Cup events, the 911 incident, weak worldwide economy and now, the outbreak of war and SARS.

The Association expects that the current unfavourable trading environment will prevail for some time before we will see any sign of a turn around and it will take months before consumer confidence will regain its momentum again.

We therefore hope that we could pull together, retailers and landlords, to ride through this crisis and retailers need this temporary rental relief from our landlords.

 
 

About HKRMA
The Hong Kong Retail Management Association (HKRMA) is the major association representing Hong Kong's retail industry. The Association's current membership represents over 500 major retail chains covering more than 5,000 retail outlets and employing two-thirds of the total retail workforce in Hong Kong. Member organizations are engaged in various types of retail businesses ranging from department stores to supermarkets, convenience stores, drug stores, food, fashion and accessories, specialty stores and industry related service organizations.

Issued by Hong Kong Retail Management Association on07/04/2003