KUALA LUMPUR (March 8): The retail industry in Malaysia registered its worst performance in two decades last year, contracting by 16.3%, as the Covid-19 pandemic forced people to stay home and retail stores shut. A majority of the retail sub-sectors contracted by double digits, with the department store and fashion and fashion accessories segments shrinking the most at 38.3% and 37.9% respectively, the latest edition of the Malaysia Retail Sales Report (March 2021) showed.
Retail expansion forecast for 2021 has also been revised downwards to 4.1% from 4.9% after major states nationwide were once again placed under the movement control order (MCO) for the most part of the current quarter. The first-quarter performance is estimated to shrink by 13.4% before experiencing a recovery in the next three quarters.