Demonetisation Impact: Premium Shopping Malls Not Much Affected

After a year since the decision was taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes to curb black money, shopping malls seem to have been not much affected by the move.

While speaking to BW Businessworld, Pushpa Bector, Executive Vice-President and Head of DLF Premium Malls said that as the consumers who come to shop in their malls deal mostly with other payment modes other than cash, they were not much affected by the decision. “If you ask has the consumption gone down post-GST or demonetisation, then the answer would be no. There was a slight dip but it was temporary and was recovered soon after the decision was taken,” she said.

Agreeing with Bector was Abhishek Bansal, the Executive Director of Pacific India-Pacific Mall-who said that demonetisation, had its impact for only a month and by the first week of December, things came back to normal.  “More than people not spending, it was more about people not having time to spend during the time when demonetisation was announced,” he added.

But overall, shopping malls have been at par with each other’s opinion of not getting much impacted by the note ban which was declared on November 8 today, last year. 

What about GST?

Just like the decision of demonetisation had not severely impacted the business of shopping malls, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) too had its own payoff. Talking to Bansal about the effect of the tax reform, he said that at Pacific, the pre-sale in June had pretty much covered for what they had lost in July. “If you count the year to date number from last year to this year, then we are in fact 15 per cent over from 2016,” he added.

Echoing similar experience was Bector who agreed that GST had its potency on sales of their premium malls for a month or two, but as September commenced, things fell back into place.

Expansion plans

Both the players are planning to expand into the retail space. While Bansal would begin its retail project and construction in March next year, Bector kept mum on details while hinting that they are planning to open shopping malls of around two hundred thousand square feet space to a four million square feet space in Delhi-NCR and outside. “We are ready to grow and evaluating projects at present, but the announcements would be made soon,” she added.