Anecdotal and word-of-mouth evidence would seem to confirm the results of our own straw poll (back page) among outlet owners following the Christmas shopping days: while some areas experienced growth, others, especially Valletta but surprisingly also Sliema, suffered a decrease in sales.

Obviously, this will have to be confirmed or denied through further studies.

This time, obviously, the retail outlet owners cannot blame the weather for any decrease in sales. The weather was glorious, more like summer than winter.

Some outlet owners blamed road works and the sheer inaccessibility of Valletta. To a people bred to have a car dropping them off on the doorstep, to have to park all the way out in Floriana and then walk all the way to Valletta, and back (especially with children in tow or with baskets as well) is daunting to many. Valletta still does not have an acceptable internal transport system to take into account these difficulties.

The case of Sliema is also instructive: here it is a simple matter of not enough parking (unless at a cost) and the maddening traffic jams on the access roads.

Then there are the outside factors.

First, the proliferation of new shopping malls that seem to have sprouted everywhere, with much improved parking provision and with many outlets under one roof.

Then, even more telling, the huge increase of online purchasing whose growth trend seems unstoppable. It used to be limited to the young and trendy but has now become mainline. Everybody is doing it and the bargains one finds are incredible (and also shed light on the mark-ups that retail outlets practice).

This huge wave of online purchasing surely beats what used to be a sure way to get one’s shopping done in previous years – shopping trips abroad.

But, always subject to confirmation, there can be a more generic comment one could make.

It is true that over the past months and years, the Maltese citizen has benefited from less payment on water and electricity bills, and also from paying less taxes, but such has been the explosion of retail outlets in Malta there has not been enough to enable sharing of profits and gains.

There is a limit to which purchasing and consumer spending can be expanded and we may have reached this limit. People are still careful as to how they spend and they still care very much about the buying power their salary can get them.

Basically, too, our average wages and salaries are still very much in the broad brackets of past years since no substantial improvement has been made except for the afore-mentioned reductions in water and electricity rates and/or Income Tax.

Hence the expectations at the base of the recent and ongoing expansion of the retail trade do not seem to have been fulfilled.

All this is, we repeat, mere conjecture at this point and requires further elucidation and appraisal. But the relentless mantra of optimism may be coming home to roost now.