Three out of every four respondents to the GRTU Malta Chamber of SMEs'' end-of-year Business Performance Survey did not report any decrease in their turnover in 2017 - but labour shortage was once again found to be the topmost concern.

The GRTU said on Thursday this was slowing down business growth, fuelling higher labour costs and leading to high levels of staff turnover.

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The survey was carried out amongst 200 business owners during the first half of January.

The biggest number of respondents said that their turnover increased year on year. Of these, 26% attributed the increase to new products followed by 20% who felt that consumer spending power was better in 2017.

Most of those who reported a decline in their turnover during 2017 felt this was due to stiff online and local competition, followed by those who pointed towards illicit trade, unfair competition and lack of parking facilities.

Only 18% of respondents sold their products online and of these, the majority said that total online sales accounted to less than 10% of their total sales. For 19% of those who sell online, online sales accounted for more than 50% of their sales. Many of those who did not sell online stated that the reason behind
this is that their products could not be sold online or their clients do not shop online.

A total of 27% had lower profits compared to the previous year while 32% had higher profits. 26.5% fared worse than they had expected at the start of the
year and 19.5% fared better.

The week and the weekend leading up to Christmas day seemed to have been, by far, the busiest for businesses, followed by the December 8 long weekend, December 13 and Black Friday. Business owners felt that brand loyalty, the cold weather and consumer spending power were positive factors this season while online competition, traffic and parking facilities and unfair trading contributed negatively to their going of business during the festive season.

Looking back at the whole season, 63% said that Black Friday has not impacted turnover, neither positively or negatively.

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Only 28% started offering price reductions before December 31, with reductions mostly ranging between 20% and 50% of the original price.

Half of the respondents are expecting a better 2018, with 40% expecting this year to be like last year and 10% expecting to fare worse.