Foreign invaders shake up retail sector
Local groups struggle against competition in tough times
About a week ago, the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union protested against H&M and Zara over the disruption the global retail giants had caused in the local market. "The truth is that these foreign retailers have entered the South African market to sell their products and this activity has economic and jobs consequences," said Simon Eppel, a researcher at Sactwu. Eppel said while these companies may invest in the country by outfitting stores and employing people, they extract their profits out of the country and by and large create a relatively small number of low-paying retail jobs with very few linkages into the rest of the economy."While we welcome foreign investment in the country we cannot be hypnotised by the simplistic rhetoric that investment is necessarily always beneficial." But South Africa's apparel retail sector seems to be a parallel universe, where local legacy businesses are reeling from a structural shift while their international counterparts are i...
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