Pressured By The COVID-19 And PSBB Pandemic, Many Retailers Will Go Bankrupt

JAKARTA - The level of visits or occupancy of shopping centers or malls has decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) implemented by the government have also contributed to the sluggish occupancy of shopping centers.

As is known, currently the level of visits to malls or shopping centers is limited to only 50 percent during the implementation of the transitional PSBB. Not only that, there is a new policy, namely limiting operating hours, which is at most 21.00 WIB.

Colliers International Indonesia Senior Associate Director Ferry Salanto said that this condition has made many retailers in shopping centers or malls increasingly depressed. As a result, some of them could not survive and were forced to close their businesses.

"So these retailers lack traffic entering the mall, transactions have also decreased so that some of them cannot survive and that ultimately affects the occupancy rate," he said, in a virtual discussion, Wednesday, December 6.

Ferry said that the lack of visits to the shopping center will continue in 2021. According to him, more and more entrepreneurs will choose not to continue their retailing in shopping centers.

Furthermore, Ferry said, if the PSBB was further tightened and the number of mall visitors was also reduced, most of these retail entrepreneurs could not survive. This means that they are on the verge of bankruptcy.

"Some of these tenants are already very critical. This means that they find it difficult to survive with the conditions in the mall which are very reduced. Especially if the pandemic continues, it is likely that many will not be able to survive and that will also affect rents from shopping centers," he said.

On the other hand, Ferry said, the retail business is a type of business that focuses on crowds and crowds. If there are no crowds or crowds then sales will also decline. Meanwhile, crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic are strictly prohibited.

"In fact, they need a crowd, a crowd, whereas these crowds are things that are avoided during the pandemic and it cannot be denied that it affects the performance of retailers," he explained.

Ferry gave an example for the Jakarta area, in the Central Business District (CBD) the occupancy fell from 83.5 percent in 2019 to 80.7 percent in 2020. Meanwhile, the area that experienced a quite high decline was the Bogor area, where the decline reached 20 percent.

"This decrease is not a very high figure, but sales are very influential," he said.