Call to open mega shopping malls

LAHORE: The Chainstore Association of Pakistan (CAP) approached the federal government for opening of the shopping malls as it was omitted from the National Coordination Committee (NCC) meeting decision made for opening of the stand-alone stores and markets.

The federal government after the NCC recommendations permitted resumption of business activities by allowing the provincial government re-opening of stand-alone stores and markets, for specific days and hours in compliance with the SOPs, in order to strike a balance between public safety and continuation of business activities for the current peak shopping season.

However, in the final permission, the mega shopping malls were not re-opened, despite the fact that these malls were already strictly following the cleanliness in their premises alongside security protocols. Thus, these mega shopping malls can implement the government SOPs more strictly and in letter and spirit as compared to the markets and stand-alone stores.

The CAP Chairman Tariq Mehboob, Senior Vice-Chairman Asfandyar Farrukh, Wasif Sikandar Butt wrote letters to the Prime Minister, Federal Ministers Asad Umar, Hammad Azhar, Adviser to PM Abdul Razak Dawood, appreciated the federal government for resumption of trade and business activities with strict SOPs.

“An important segment of the organised retail sector, the shopping malls, has been omitted from the decision of the National Coordination Committee.

For the organised retail sector, the decision to keep the shopping malls closed is inexplicable. If anything, a shopping mall with its limited ingress and ample facilities is best placed to ensure observance of all SOPs. In fact, a handful of the major shopping malls are already operational due to the functioning of the hypermarkets/supermarkets within them and are following stringent safety measures”, the letters stated.

The CAP shared the details of the SOPs already implemented with some of the mega malls of Lahore and Karachi with the federal government with documentary evidences of the best practices. Besides Pakistani mega shopping malls practices, the CAP also shares the practices of shopping malls adopted in the Middle East with a comparison of local malls. The practices adopted by the Pakistanis shopping malls are almost similar to the Middle East shopping malls, while in some cases are better than them.

Tariq Mehboob said that it was estimated that global trade may drop by 10 percent compared to last year. This coupled with an environment of growing protectionism will hinder the recovery of the export sector and it may recover over a long and protracted period. In these circumstances, Tariq believed that the domestic commerce can be the saviour of the economy as it has the ability to recover quickly. The spearhead of this recovery is the retail trade, he mentioned.

“We cannot emphasise the need of urgent intervention by the government to allow shopping malls to open for the same number of days and hours as other markets.

Currently, the retail outlets within shopping malls are disadvantaged and unable to commence business in this peak season, due to which they may not be able to survive the ongoing economic crisis”, the CAP letters stated. The CAP urged for due action to be taken to remedy this critical disparity within the retail sector.