Day without VAT increased trade sales by 44% in March, according to Fenalco's blog

Fedevelopment revealed on April 12 the Economic Blog for March, in which it was recorded that 44% of the companies surveyed said they had higher sales than the same month last year, 37% said they were similar and 19% said they had low sales.

According to the merchants' guild, the Day Without VAT was vital for the good economic performance recorded in the fashion, clothing, textile and footwear sectors, as well as school supplies and household products.

The president of Fenalco, Jaime Alberto Cabal, said that “many businessmen pointed out that winter has affected the frequency of visits to points of sale, particularly in those cities with a warm climate.”

The head of the guild referred to the rise in prices and the changes that have been made to low-income consumers.

“Due to price increases, low-income buyers opt for presentations with less content, a situation that, together with the focused problems of sourcing certain categories of consumer goods, has forced distributors to increase the frequency of supply in the traditional channel as they manage to acquire the commodity”.

Regarding the economic expectation, 46% of respondents said that over the next six months their business and the economy in general will perform well, but 12% say that the outlook is one of pessimism.

“The general increase in prices over the last few months has forced traders to rearrange their operation and to make an effort not to transfer all of the cost overruns to the consumer, which suggests that, although March has a good balance, the inflation peak may change the picture in the coming months. months,” Cabal said.

On March 11, the first VAT-Free Day of 2022 was held with sales of 9.1 billion pesos, and according to DIAN, these transactions were recorded in 6,858,695 invoices, thus exceeding the 8 billion that they had estimated since Fenalco.

The Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, María Ximena Lombana, said that these sales figures “show that the measure of the Day without VAT has been well received by consumers, traders and industrialists alike. With this valuable tool we are stimulating consumption, electronic invoicing and collection, with enormous benefits for the country.”

According to the DIAN report, the items that increased sales the most compared to the first day without VAT last year were sports goods, with 75%, clothing with 57.1%, agricultural products for consumption with 44%, computers and peripherals with 38.4%, and household appliances with 25,1%.

Similarly, the DIAN Electronic Invoicing system reported, compared to the first day without VAT in 2021, an increase in sales in the departments of Norte de Santander, with 43.86%; Atlántico with 43.20%; Antioquia with 5.78%; and Santander with 2.70%.

The director of DIAN, Lisandro Junco, pondered “the good performance of the retail sector, of consumers and also of the DIAN team in real-time control and monitoring of transactions made with electronic invoicing, which drives us to continue working towards legality and formality”.

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