Sales in the shopping mall sector showed a significant recovery last year, but are still below the level before the pandemic hit.
Sales totaled BRL 159.2 billion in 2021, which represents a growth of 23.6% compared to 2020, when it stood at BRL 128.8 billion. At the time, many businesses were closed for weeks and then reopened with partial operation.
In comparison with 2019, the year of normal operations, there was a 17.4% drop in sales. That year, sales were R$ 192 billion.
The data were released today by the Brazilian Association of Shopping Centers (Abrasce). The survey covers 620 enterprises in the field across the country.
“The great engine for the growth of sales was the return of people to the malls. In 2020, there were many restrictions on the movement of the population, and the malls remained closed for a long time”, says the president of Abrasce, Glauco Humai.
“In 2021, we started the year with restrictions, but they were released as vaccination progressed”, he adds.
The return of visitors to the malls was also driven by the repressed demand of the population for going to restaurants, theaters and cinemas, in addition to a certain tiredness in shopping only on the internet, evaluates Humai.
“In our internal studies, we noticed an exhaustion. The consumer missed taking the product in hand and trying it,” he says.
Abrasce’s president also points out that sales at malls could have been better if it weren’t for the negative effects of inflation and high interest rates – which reduced the purchasing power of consumers and made borrowing more expensive.
Not to mention unemployment, which fell less than potential and remained high, in his assessment.
“Macroeconomic indicators worsened throughout the year and did not contribute positively to the sector’s result. It could have been better,” he highlights.
More survey data
In 2021, five shopping centers were opened, and the total number of stores grew by 1.5% compared to 2020, from 110,000 to 112,000 units.
The number of openings was below the average of the last five years, which was 12 per year. “Compared with the historical series, the number was bad. But, looking at it coldly, the result was positive considering that we are in the midst of the pandemic and the economic crisis”, analyzes the president of Abrasce.
Gross leasable area (GLA, available area for stores) also rose 1.5% to 17.2 million square meters. Vacant spaces fell from 9.3% to 6.1% in the period – a level still above the historical average of 5.3%.
The average number of visitors per month was 397 million, an increase of 16.4% compared to the previous year, when the monthly average was 341 million.
The number of people employed in the sector increased by 2.1%, from 998 thousand to 1.02 million.
Source: CNN Brasil
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