Mall owners to support retailer tenants: SCAI

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jan 17, 2022

As retail restrictions to curb the third wave of Covid-19 see malls shut to various extents across the country, the Shopping Centres Association of India is confident that mall owners will offer retailers relief. 

“This is the third time it is happening, and developers and shopping centres have stood with their tenants and retailers in the last two waves,” SCAI’s director Abhishek Bansal told the Press Trust of India. “They will again stand with their partners in this third wave also, so that everyone tide over this situation.”
 
Despite SCAI’s assurances, many stores are apprehensive of the new, quickly escalating retail restrictions, especially as they come just before the wedding season. This is a time when clothing and jewellery retailers would hope to make some of their highest sales of the year and a halt to weddings and reduced opening hours is sure to hamper this.  

The first and second waves of the virus saw many mall owners offer discounts and rent waivers to store operators and some malls also offered discounts and revenue share models during the recovery periods. However, some malls had large loan repayments to keep up on and were, therefore, unable to offer significant discounts in order not to default on the loan repayments. 
 
As well as fashion and lifestyle stores in malls, restaurants in food courts and multiplex operators are also feeling the effects of reduced operating hours. SCAI is confident mall owners will extend the same support to these businesses. 
 
“The third wave of Covid has once again brought businesses into a stressed situation,” said the Retailers Association of India’s CEO Kumar Rajagopalan, ET Bureau reported. “Various parts of the country have various norms to tackle it. This means that retailers and malls would talk to each other and try to come out with new terms to tide over this new wave.”