India's retail sales up 26% YoY in December 2021: RAI

Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India (RAI), said, “Retail business was on a steady growth trajectory during most of December, however, the pace of growth was seen dropping off significantly towards the last week of December due to the fresh sets of curbs imposed in most parts of the country owing to the third wave of the pandemic.”

Although the overall figures appear positive, the impact can be seen at category level as footwear (7 per cent) and apparel (2 per cent) started to lose steam, RAI said in a media release.

RAI has appealed to the central government — Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare — to instruct the state governments to refrain from imposing restrictions based on positivity rate and consider hospitalisations as the criteria to determine the severity of restrictions instead as most of the country’s population is vaccinated.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)