With an atypical pace trade in Mexico is recovering, despite discouraging forecasts that rule out the effect of the pandemic of 2020 and store closures.

August numbers alone are striking, but do not reflect the reality, nor the fact of including the 30% drop in sales in 2020 when the pandemic began and retail lived one of the most complicated times in history.

This week the National Association of Department Stores and Self-Service (ANTAD) said that at the end of August, comparable store sales (with more than a year of operation) reported an increase of 4.5% and total of 6.4%.

For those who follow the market there are other factors that determine the path to recovery, especially if it is considered that just last month the trade of department stores and supermarkets experienced with revenues of $105 billion pesos, a lower level than in July of this year.

MAC Arquitectos Consultores believes that the $5 billion pesos less in August does not mean anything, and even that nominal growth is positive since that 6.4% reported by ANTAD is at least higher than inflation which reached 5.59% in the same period.

If 2020 is left out of perspective, it is important to consider that this year's sales are lower than those of 2019 when Walmart left the association, since the numbers do not include the participation of the 19 thousand stores of Oxxo, Alsea, Party City, which also left the association with different objectives.

Since the fall of last year has generated an atypical rate of increases such as last May and low in other periods from store closures, reflecting corporate strategies that retailers have had to undertake to the effect of the pandemic.

And it is not the same that sales grew 69.5% in April this year, compared to the fall of 20% in 2020. Or an apparent deficit in August of this year, which in the same period of 2020 had already recovered the historic fall. The reality is also that the pandemic hit big and small in the industry. It motivated the departure from the country of Best Buy, in addition to the closure of cinemas, gyms and other retail chain stores, with all the support plans that FIBRAS and mall owners generated in the operation closures due to health contingency.

These are also facts that created an effect on the levels of availability of premises in shopping centers of 15% and up to 30% in stores on the street in Mexico City (CDMX) where it operates 4.5 million m2 of commercial space.

At the beginning of this year we commented on the drop in sales resulting from an economic crisis in 2018 for high-end brands that had other sales channels, in addition to the impact of the two closures of operations resulting from COVID-19. Under this perspective of a gradual recovery, it is a fact that in the coming months the changes in the results will continue, especially because the specter of a new closure cannot be ruled out in the face of the extension of the current wave of contagions.

• Walmart Inc