Following the same worrying trend of recent months, the increase of 2% in retail sales has benefited chains and supermarkets, but not the small and medium-sized businesses, which have seen their sales decline with respect to the same month of 2018 -0.5%.
This trend has been the norm for more than a year, and we can say that it has already become a chronic problem. The need for local commerce, therefore, to adapt to new consumption habits and to assume the need to digitize them is urgent and urgent.
The Secretary General of the Spanish Confederation of Commerce, José Guerrero, emphasizes that "the organization is working intensely on the awareness of the sector to adapt to the new habits of consumers, as well as to provide tools to meet their digitization needs", although it qualifies that "being a sector so atomized, with thousands of stores, the digitization process of the sector to be able to compete on equal terms with the rest of the commercial formats can only be done with the institutional support of our Administrations"
In this regard, the CEC urges the formation of a new Government at the earliest possible, as well as in the different Communities and municipal corporations: "We know that all parties are aware of the need to support small and medium-sized businesses, and they have transferred this during the electoral campaign. Now is the time to get down to work and to transform the promises into realities that allow local commerce to come out of the free fall in sales in which it has been for more than a year. " Among the most urgent measures, we consider it essential to reopen the debate on the regulation of rebates, and that the instruments that have been put in place to advance in the digitalization of the sector and fight against the intrusive are translated into solutions and concrete supports to our merchants
The sector is immersed in an authentic reconversion, and the only formula to adopt the appropriate measures and achieve the survival of thousands of establishments is the declaration of the trade as strategic sector of the economy, which would facilitate greater budgetary support to facilitate the digitalization and competitiveness of SMEs in commerce.
Finally, the Secretary General of the Confederation has wanted to condemn the threatening tone of the letters sent by the Treasury to thousands of freelancers of commerce, since in the case of small commerce, "the low turnover to which they refer is the consequence of the very complicated situation that traders who struggle to carry out their businesses go through", and that the last thing they need , he adds, "is a sword of Damocles more on their heads".