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我现在还想买个小生意做，要这样的话那还敢买啊。 Retailing to get even tougher in 2009 15/12/2008 12:00:03 PM The tough times suffered by retailers this year will only get worse in 2009. Having endured a horror 2008 because of high interest rates and record petrol prices, retailers now face a nation of shoppers worried about their jobs. Put simply, "shoppers are on strike," Access Economics director David Rumbens says in the independent forecaster's latest retail report. Cafes and restaurants have been doing it particularly tough but the household goods sector, long the star performer of the retail sector, is seeing its sharpest slowdown in a decade. Mr Rumbens says consumers are taking stock of considerable falls in their wealth, the risk of ongoing capital losses from both shares and housing, and the increasing chance of unemployment. "The risk for Australian retailers is that a return to higher savings now occurs chaotically and rapidly across the next year or two, rather than more steadily across a number of years," he says. Mr Rumbens says the great consumer boom of the past decade occurred as the economy grew rapidly, and wealth grew more rapidly still, to the extent that people stopped saving "the money coming through the door". By early 2004 the average family spent four per cent more than it earned, in sharp contrast to the eight per cent saving rates averaged across the 1980s and 1990s. Access is forecasting retail sales to fall 0.1 per cent in 2008-09 compared with 4.5 per cent growth in 2007-08. In 2009-10 it expects anaemic growth of 0.9 per cent. "The disaster scenario would be if Australian housing prices were infected by the big falls in sharemarket values and the wider losses of confidence among consumers," Mr Rumbens says. However, the more likely scenario is that consumers stay in their "foxholes" through to mid-2009 before beginning a cautious recovery. He expects the next year will bring more interest rate cuts and tax cuts, but jobs growth will slow, as will wage gains. Debt laden NSW and the ACT are where the trading conditions of 2008 have been the most dire. "Conditions remain sufficiently atrocious in NSW that it and the other debt-heavy states might not see a particularly rapid recovery," he says. Victoria trails along in little better condition, but states where consumers have smaller debts - South Australia and Tasmania - are seeing solid retail gains. While Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland have benefited from a long-running commodities boom, Mr Rumbens expects they will lose much of that support they've enjoyed in recent years. [ 本帖最后由 北雁南飞 于 2008-12-15 20:06 编辑 ] |
