-Contributed by Charu Gupta
The much awaited ICRIER report that was commissioned at the behest of Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi has been finally out which has good news for all.
According to the report, Indian Retail is close to $300 billion with a mix of organized and unorganized players and is set to grow at 13% to touch $590 bn by 2011-12. Share of modern retail will increase to 16% from 4% in the same period. The report suggests that the small retailers and kirana stores won’t be affected much by the presence of organized players in the industry instead they are going to stay stronger.
The main areas of research were to find out the impact of organized retail on employment, consumers, farmers and manufacturers, prices and overall economic growth.
The report suggests that the farmers would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this retail revolution. The profit realization for farmers surged 60% when the produce was sold directly to organized retailers as compared to selling with mandis.
There was no overall job loss in the unorganized sector, says the research. However, some decline was seen in the volumes and profit of kiranas near modern retailers which is expected to decrease over a period of time. The closure rate of unorganized retailers is found to be 4.2% per annum. But all this, hasn’t dampened the spirit of these retailers and majority of them also want their coming generations to continue with this business. 10% of the respondents were also open to the idea of becoming a franchisee with a retail chain.
"Intermediaries dealing in fruits and vegetables have had some negative impact in the first few years which is expected to negate as time progresses. Some of them also seem positive about the proposition of working with big retailers in future", says the report.
