Businesses batten down the hatches

Date Published: 09-Apr-2009

GALWAY’S retail sector is braced for its toughest nine months yet on foot of this week’s hardhitting budget – but business leaders already believe that confidence will start to return to the marketplace by the start of next year.

In the meantime, they see retailers battening down the hatches, knowing that families will now effectively be trying to spread eleven months’ income over twelve. The chief executive of Galway Chamber Michael Coyle said that the budget utterly failed to address one of Finance Minister Brian Lenihan’s six essential steps for recovery in that in did nothing to improve competitiveness.

“There wasn’t even a token gesture; no reductions in the VAT rate for example. And while there had to be serious provision made to retrain those now out of work, I would not like to see that limit upskilling possibilities for those still in employment instead,” he said.

Consumers’ Association spokesman Michael Kilcoyne was more pessimistic in his assessment, believing that the county’s retail sector was…