Local businesses claim Balearic summer sales have been a “washout”

PALMA
THE president of the Balearic Business Federation, Afedeco, reported yesterday that the summer shop sales which have just drawn to a close “did not go at all well” and that there was a great deal of seasonal stock that simply did not sell.

Bartomeu Servera was not the only voice of disappointment with the secretary of the Small to Medium-sized Business Assocation of Majorca (Pimeco), Josep Capo asserting at the same time that these summer sales have been the worst of the last seven years.

Servera added that Afedeco is preparing a report on the sales which have recently come to an end and that it will be published in the next few days. Pimeco has already concluded its own findings in which it claimed that the so-called “rebajas” proved “totally negative” for businesses right across Majorca showing a downturn in sales volume of as much as 14 percent in comparison with results for the same period last year. Areas which showed especially bad results were the outlying districts of the island and municipalities on the outskirts of Palma.

Pimeco stated quite clearly in its research into the outcome of the sales that the volume of seasonal wear was “clearly insufficient”, and in tandem with Afedeco agreed that it was difficult to see how things were going to get any better in the immediate future.

The results, said both business associations, were proof of “a considerable drop in the level of net profit generated by the sales period during the current financial year.

Bartomeu Servera said he was uncomfortably aware that Balearic businesses are closing due to the crisis and that the number of staff being laid off in the commerce sector during the peak August period was running at 31.3 percent, “a discouraging figure in anyone's books” he said.