Families consume less and trade retreats in 2015
August 24, 2017 10h00 AM | Last Updated: September 04, 2017 09h21 AM
The trade figures for the year 2015 point out to losses of job positions and revenue, mainly influenced by the sector of vehicles. Released today, the data of the Annual Survey of Trade - PAC shows that the trade sector moved R$3.1 trillion in terms of net operating revenue, a drop of 0.5% over 2014, and employed 10.3 million persons, against 10.7 million in 2014.
Concerning revenue, the manager of the survey, Danielle de Oliveira, explains that the drop of 0.5% reflects stability for the sector as a whole, though the three segments of the trade activity should be observed separately, as they behave in different ways. The retail trade and that of vehicles, pieces and motorcycles fell 1.6% and 11%, respectively; the wholesale, accounting for most of the revenue (45.4%), increased 3.3%, helping to offset the drop in the other two activities.
"Within the sector of vehicles, pieces and motorcycles, the sector of motor vehicles, alone, lost 13.6%. It is a significant figure, as this sector moved R$246 billion in 2014 in terms of revenue, against R$213 billion in 2015", explains Danielle. "The sector of vehicles is very influenced by income, credit and employment. As some government incentives were withdrawn from 2015 onwards, like the IPI exemption, we can notice a steeper drop".
"If the economy is cutting jobs and income, the trade sector suffers from the loss in the consumption and businesses have to pass these losses on", remarks Juliana Paiva, manager of annual surveys per enterprise at the IBGE. The decrease of employed persons reflected in all the three sectors of the survey: both retail and vehicles, pieces and motorcycles shrank 4.2% and the wholesale lost 2.3% of the employed persons, being retail the segment that concentrated the biggest proportion of the labor force in trade: 73.5%, more than 7.5 million persons.
The sectors that represent essential areas of consumption, like hypermarkets and supermarkets, managed to maintain positive figures and generated the highest revenue in the retail trade, more than R$340 billion. They also led the average number of employed persons, with 99 persons per company – index quite above the others: the second-placed retail of fuels and lubricants had 12 persons employed per company.
"Hypermarkets and supermarkets are the last ones impacted by the crisis", says Danielle. "When the earnings of workers decrease, they maintain just the essential expenses. They will neither change their cars nor refurbish their houses", complements Juliana.
Text: Marília Loschi
Images: Agência Brasil
Table: Helga Szpiz
