A survey conducted by the India MART Knowledge services (IKS) on the SMEs of retail sector revealed that around 72% of the SMEs expected the sales growth by more than 20 percent in 2011.
As per the survey, 60% of the respondents reported that market had picked up pace in 2010 and 36% reported that there was no change in the market. About 4% reported that the market had worsened. 16 percent of the surveyed respondents claimed that the consumer sentiment surpassed expectations in 2010. However, 72 percent of the respondents witnessed an average improvement in consumer sentiment and 12 percent experienced a negative change.
According to the survey, about 40% of the respondents experienced sales growth by more than 20% from 2009 to 2010. Another 40% of the SMEs surveyed reported increase in sales up to 20%. The rest of them said that there sales had declined in 2010.
When considered about the export demand, 16% of the respondents reported more than 20% increase in export demand in 2010. 56% reported that demand had increased by up to 20% and 28% said that there had been a decline in export demand since 2009.
Coming to product prices, the product prices fared better in 2010 for 44% of the respondents. Of these, eight percent experienced a significant improvement in product prices. 36 percent of them found a marginal improvement in prices. While 32 percent of the respondents found no change in product prices, 24 percent experienced a decline in product prices in 2010. On the whole, as per the surveyed results, there is an estimated growth of sales among SMEs in retail sector.