Last week the public was provided with two contradictory statements about retail in Malta especially during the Christmas period.

This was highlighted on one and the same page in last week's issue of this paper.

The top story on page 5 said: Retailers hail 2015 as a positive year; traffic parking highlighted as a problem.

The bottom story said: Further decrease in retail trade in Malta in December - Eurostat.

Now it just cannot be that the two stories are right at the same time.

The GRTU survey, which is usually published immediately after the Christmas period, not at the beginning of February as this year, is reproduced more fully on page 2 of this issue.

Both surveys are based on surveys with the people engaged in the sector. Can one explain away the discrepancy by saying the retailers said one thing to the GRTU and another to Eurostat?

Beyond the different views, however, basically the two surveys agree. Retailers are finding increasing difficulties. It is not a question of who to blame but it is nevertheless true that online shopping has taken on and increasingly Maltese are purchasing online what they used to get by going to the shops or by going abroad. Going abroad is still as strong, nay, stronger, than ever before.

There is practically nothing that the retailers, the government or anybody else can do about online shopping. Malta may be an island but it is not going to erect a wall around it as they tried to do, with disastrous consequences, in the 1980s.

The retailers grumble about traffic and the impossibility of parking. They are right but again they can do precious little about it. Our commercial centres have become clogged, and many times it is preferable to walk than to try and find an adequate parking space.

What the GRTU survey does not mention, and the Eurostat one does not even go there, is the sheer number of shops, increasing by the day or maybe even by the hour, while the country's population. Both residents and transient, is also increasing but at a slower pace. There are far too many shops, and more, bigger, newer, ones are coming on stream every day.

This may seem like very depressing reading but fortunately retailers in general do not seem affected by these facts. Behind the launches there are innovative, enterprising, spirits who take up the challenge willingly, bring to it new ideas, tackle the public's new tastes, seek new markets and above all, risk, risk, risk.

Every so often there is a generational shift even in this sector: yesterday's shops start to be seen as tired and tawdry and new ones sprout up. As happens with all ventures and enterprises, some succeed, some falter and go under. But entrepreneurs must not get discouraged. That is the risk they signed for when they decided to launch their ventures.

It is not by finding some way to block internet access that retailers can get growth. Nor by blocking the catamaran from Sicily, another issue the local retailers have. But by finding out the needs of today's customers and by ensuring they go away satisfied.

These are the realities of today and, like their predecessors did when they faced vastly different challenges, they must survive and succeed in this kind of circumstances.

One issue, for instance, which is valid in some areas but absent in others, is the importance of after-sales service. Now that is an area where huge improvements should be made and where a retailer may steal a march on his competition.