Every fourth shopping center in Russia will not survive a pandemic

The authorities now have two ways: either to give shopping centers a deferral of taxes, including VAT, or to increase the incomes of the population that they could spend on purchases in the same shopping centers.

The council believes that at the end of the year, a quarter of shopping centers will not be able to fulfill their tax obligations. By the end of the year, Russian shopping centers will have to pay up to 52 billion rubles of VAT, another 24 billion property tax, 15 billion income tax and another four billion single social tax. Due to a three-month downtime, a quarter of shopping centers may not have this money by the end of the year.

Shopping centers will be able to fulfill their obligations to the state only if the Russians have money for new purchases. “Shopping centers have no other sources of income than the money that tenants bring to them. They live only due to the fact that people come to shopping centers and make purchases. Accordingly, if people don’t want it, tenants’s revenue drops, and after that the incomes of the owners of shopping centers also decrease”, - said Igor Berezin, president of the Marketing Guild in an interview with Radio Sputnik.

A survey of Russians showed that only a third of the country's inhabitants are ready to return to the pre-crisis level of consumption in the coming weeks after the restrictions are lifted. Most people (84%) did not have any savings during non-working days. And only in 6% of Muscovites and 4% of Russians in the regions, income from self-isolation increased. Almost every second Russian plans to revise his spending on cinemas and entertainment. Another 65% of the respondents in our country have already reduced their spending on clothing or are planning to do so in the near future. Every second does not plan to update the electronics in the house in the near future.