Thailand
Indonesia: Online shops not causing closure of retail outlets: BPS
The Central Statistics Agency’s (BPS) balance and statistics analysis deputy head, Sri Soelistyowati, denied that poor sales at a number of retail outlets were caused by the emergence of online shops.
Sri said the market share of e-commerce was still relatively low compared to the market share of offline retail. “Online shopping share for total household spending was less than 1 percent,” she said at a press conference in Bogor, West Java, over the weekend.
She, however, acknowledged that there was a lack of data on the number of online shopping transactions as her agency was conducting a survey to collect data on e-commerce transactions.
“Therefore, it is wrong to blame online shopping for the closure of several retail outlets,” she added.
Sri said there had been a shift in how people spent their money.
“There has been a shift in spending from non-leisure [to leisure],” she said, adding people prefer to spend their money, for example on going to restaurants, to stay at hotels and to seek entertainment.
Therefore, she advised the government to encourage people to spend their money domestically by developing leisure facilities.
According to BPS data, household sending for restaurants and hotels reached 5.52 percent of income in the third quarter of 2017, compared to the figure in the corresponding period of 2016, which stood at 5.01 percent. (jlm/bbn)
Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/12/11/online-shops-not-causing-closure-of-retail-outlets-bps.html