Supermarket sector confidence rises in December

About 41% of businesses in the industry are optimistic about the future, a number 11 percentage points greater than the demonstrated in November. The data is from December PCS (survey of confidence of Supermarkets in the State of São Paulo) made by APAS (São Paulo supermarket Association).
According to the publication, the main variables that impacted on the optimism are the inflation rate and sales, with 42% of optimism. Firstly the future expectation is optimistic on GDP growth, with more than 58% believing that this happen. "Several analysts point out that the economic growth could reach 3% in 2018 and supermarket owners, entrepreneurs reflect this", explained Thiago Berka, Economist of APAS.
Another point which demonstrates optimism for the sector is when the nominal sales growth. For 45% of respondents, the growth will be between 4% and 6%. Only 9% believe in fall and still low, of 0% to 2%. "When we analyze the situation of 2016 and 2017 as the perception comes changing consistently. Pessimism December 2016 was at 40% and 25% in December 2017. The optimism was 27.7% to 34.7%, "commented Berka.
Regarding the performance of the year against 2016 2017, about 36% of the supermarket reported drop in their sales between 1% to 4%. It is worth mentioning also the Christmas performance of 2017 to 2016 front: about 45% of the entrepreneurs observed growth and other 45% had a fall.
"This figure demonstrates something that APAS realized throughout this year which was a very large variation between the different supermarkets sales performances. The price war and promotions was pretty intense, reflecting the prolonged crisis in order to maintain the impacting turnover margin ", assessed the Economist of APAS.
Summer is an important time for sales because the product mix changes. The beer, meats, fruits, juices, soft drinks generally come to rise 30% by volume of sales. To 27% of sector sales up in summer 2018 compared to 2% between 2017 4% to 36% between 4% to 6%, and 9% to between 8% to 10%. Only 18% believe dropping up to 4% on sales.
"As inflation is low, there will be a real growth expected interesting. There is also less expectation of travel by the population of São Paulo which can also help in the volume of sales ", finalized Berka.