135 Million Millennials Drive World's Fastest Retail Market

[Neo]

135 Million Millennials Drive World's Fastest Retail Market
Middle class expected to surpass U.K., Italy over 2016-21
By
Faseeh Mangi
September 28, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/benchmark

• Nearly two-thirds of Pakistan population under 30 years old
• Pakistan’s retail stores forecast to grow by 50% in 5 years

Photographer: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg

Pakistan’s burgeoning youth and their freewheeling attitude toward rising incomes have turned the nation into the world's fastest growing retail market.

The market is predicted to expand 8.2 percent per annum through 2016-2021 as disposable income has doubled since 2010, according to research group Euromonitor International. The size of the middle class is estimated to surpass that of the U.K. and Italy in the forecast period, it said.

Pakistan's improving security environment, economic expansion at near 5 percent and cheap consumer prices are driving shoppers to spend up big. Almost two-thirds of the nation's 207.8 million people are aged under 30, according to the Jinnah Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank.


“We have a new millennial shopper at hand. They don’t mind spending to have the kind of lifestyle they would like,” said Shabori Das, senior research analyst at Euromonitor. “It’s not like the Baby Boomer generation where savings for the future generation was important.”

Pakistan is bucking the trend in the U.S. -- where stores are closing at a record pace as e-commerce undermines bricks-and-mortar. It's also attracting foreign operators: Turkish home appliance maker Arcelik AS and Dutch dairy giant Royal FrieslandCampina NV entered the market last year via acquisitions. Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp. and Renault SA are all building plants in the South Asian nation.

Pakistan’s retail stores are expected to increase by 50 percent to 1 million outlets in the five years through 2021, Euromonitor said. Its three biggest malls, Lucky One in Karachi and Packages Mall and Emporium Mall in Lahore, opened in the past two years.

Pakistan is mirroring what India went through about four years ago. Both countries have young populations with more income and less inclination toward saving which is a distinct difference to what retailers elsewhere are dealing with, said Das.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...llennials-drive-world-s-fastest-retail-market

 

[tarunraju]

How's the employment rate among those 135 million millennials?

 

[Neo]

How's the employment rate among those 135 million millennials?

Its a booming businesses, the growth rate says it all. Retail is becoming a common thing in the small 'mohallas' which indicates that there's huge scope in employment.

 

[tarunraju]

Its a booming businesses, the growth rate says it all. Retail is becoming a common thing in the small 'mohallas' which indicates that there's huge scope in employment.

It's important for investors to know just how many of those 135 million people are spending their own money (employment, sustainable source of income) as opposed to spending someone else's money (family's, not sustainable in the long term); if they want to invest in the market.

As per the most prevalent definition of "millennial" (those born between 1981 till date), India has 794 million millennials, with 7.8 percent unemployment rate (not counting unemployable minors under 18); and 705 million people under the age of 30. There are 301 million people under the "eager to spend" category (ages 18 to 35); and 183 million in the "spend big" category (ages 36 to 55).

It's just a very big market with purchasing power in many hands.

Knock yourself out with India's stats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India

 

[sorcerer]

Pakistan's improving security environment, economic expansion at near 5 percent and cheap consumer prices are driving shoppers to spend up big. Almost two-thirds of the nation's 207.8 million people are aged under 30, according to the Jinnah Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank.

china is dumping goods at a cheaper rate than what pakistan's native industry is producing.Meaning all these Million buying is simple chinese crap where china is making money from pakistanis.

ANOTHER COLONISATION where pakistan doesnt have a fix.

The real question is there is a millenial generation, but is pakistan own companies capitalizing on it?
NOOOO!!!They cant compete and they are closing down

is pakistan govt getting anything out of it,
NOOOOO!!!because they are neck deep in chinese debt already.

so this paki media news is pak being happy about chinese cheap dumping goods and paki buying spree senselessly...

ITS NOT MAGIC OR REAL BUYING POWER!!!..ITS CHINESE with low quality goods!!!!

Mother China: A 'Chinese revolution' sweeps across Pakistan

It is quite late in the night but Rawalpindi’s China Market is still swarming with customers. An array of shops in narrow alleys selling imported Chinese goods next to the bustling Raja Bazaar, the market is stuffed with all kinds of merchandise, leaving little space for the tired customers to move around. “Be careful; you may break the vase. It is expensive,” a salesman in a crockery shop warns a little girl trying to feel the smooth surface of a vessel on display.

At another shop, a woman is haggling over the price of what looks like a Versace handbag. She knows it is a copy – a good one though – and wants the shopkeeper to give her a hefty discount on it. “You are demanding a lot of money for a copy,” she politely reproaches the man at the counter who reminds her that it is a “first” copy and not just an “ordinary” bag. But then he agrees to give her a handsome discount.

Able to buy the copies of branded luxury goods, which look as good as originals, and at prices that are within the shopping budgets of most middle-class households across Pakistan, customers in the country have much to thank traders in China Market for. “The best thing about these goods is that our middle-class people can now afford to live in style,” says Noshad Sheikh who runs a shop at China Market. “[Shopkeepers selling these goods have] brought international brands within the reach of local customers who, otherwise, would see those brands only in movies and on television shows,” he says. “Of course, I am talking about copies and not the original products,” he adds with a smile.

Like most traders across Pakistan, he wonders if Pakistan’s retail sector could have blossomed like it has in the last decade or so if there were no China. “We wouldn’t have built sprawling markets at such a fast pace or created thousands of jobs [in the retail business] if we did not have these Chinese goods to sell,” says Ishaq. The new commercial culture introduced by China has not just facilitated the middle and low-income consumers in Pakistan, it has also helped small traders like Ishaq and Sheikh to explore options they could have only dreamt about without access to Chinese merchandise. Foreign travel was the prerogative of rich businessmen and exclusive domain of large-scale traders when business and trade destinations were mostly Western countries. China’s arrival on the scene has allowed even small-scale traders to go abroad and purchase their merchandise first-hand: visas are easy to get; expenses for travel and boarding and lodging are not as big as they would be for European or American destinations; and goods in demand back home are dirt cheap when purchased in bulk in China.

“You can go to China every week, depending on your sales and cash flow,” says Mohammad Usman, who deals in mobile phone accessories at Lahore’s Liberty Market. Pakistani traders usually go to Yiwu city in Zhejiang province, about 300 kilometres to the south of Shanghai. The city, according to the United Nations, houses the “largest small commodity wholesale market in the world”. What has made all this possible? How can Pakistani traders go out and shop for Chinese imports with such ease? How have ‘Made in China’ products become so easily available all over Pakistan and at prices that almost everyone can afford? The answers lie in a free trade agreement (FTA) that came into effect between China and Pakistan in July 2007.

https://herald.dawn.com/news/1153413


The FLIP SIDE

Emco Industries is a large-scale industrial unit located almost midway on the road that connects Lahore with Sheikhupura. Its specialty: ceramics — from electric insulators to sanitaryware to acid-proof tiles. A couple of years ago, it shut down its tile manufacturing unit and sacked 500 people working there. The reason, says Abdul Waheed, an executive at the Emco Industries, was the heavy influx of Chinese ceramic tiles in Pakistani markets.


Nobody, it seems, took such threats to the local industry into consideration while negotiating the FTA with China. Trade officials in Islamabad, instead, expected the agreement to help Pakistani manufacturers gain access to the ever-expanding Chinese market — imagine the lure of more than one billion consumers living right next door to you. And the agreement did increase Pakistan’s exports to China – at least initially – from one billion US dollars in 2008 to over three billion US dollars in the next five years. Yet, in spite of this rather extraordinary growth, the share of Pakistani exports in China’s market remains tiny.


The agreement has also reduced government revenue earned from the import of consumer goods from China without corresponding benefits in export earning, says a Pakistani diplomat who has conducted a research study on the FTA’s impacts on Pakistani industry and exporters.

Beijing also went back on its commitment to give tariff concessions to Pakistani textiles and fish exports in the first five years of the agreement’s operation.

Well!!! that explains.
Another happy news from pakistan, thanks to china!