Organised retailing in South is mere 4.9 per cent

Bangalore, May 31 (UNI) Organised retailing in South was a mere Rs 12,825 crore, about 4.9 per cent of the total retail market of Rs 262,930 crore in the region.

Nationally organised retail market was only 4.5 per cent, according to a study on retail market in South, released by Karnataka Governor T N Chaturvedi at a mega retail event ''Shop'' here, Karnataka topped the list in South with the organised retail constituting 5.3 per cent, followed by Kerala 4.8 per cent, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu 4.7 per cent each and Pondicherry 5.3 per cent.

The study revealed that the Southern markets were organised better compared to the country average in nine out of 13 retail categories.

FMCG is the largest retail category (South India: Rs 1,62,313 crore; all-India Rs 7,43,900 crore) of which in the South 1.2 per cent was organised as against 0.8 per cent for the whole of India.

Fashion was the largest category in the organised retail segment, valued at Rs 4,665 crore and comprising 19 percent of the organised market share in South India, the study said.

With organised retail growing at an annual average of 45 per cent, the industry was gaining higher weightage in the overall sectoral employment outlook ranking. The retail, media and FMCG sectors together score highest with 8 points in the 2006 Retail Labour Index followed by the Infrastructure sector (7 points).

The report said there are about 15 million retail units in the country, including the paan stalls and neighbourhood kirana stores, and about 50 million people were dependent for their livelihood on these. Retail and Wholesale thus absorbs 8.7 percent of the country's total workforce. South India employed nearly 21.5 per cent of the 50 million people engaged in Retail and Wholesale, which is roughly 11 million.

In Karnataka 9.4 percent of the employed/self-employed people are engaged in Retail and wholesale activities. However, of the entire South states Andhra Pradesh has the highest absolute numbers of 3.6 million engaged in the sector.

Future projections revealed that Retail would generate nearly 11 million additional jobs across the country by year 2010, when the share of retail in total employed will go up to 9.9 per cent (equivalent to 60.6 million).

UNI