‘Uncertainty’ forces cuts

CITY Pharmacy Ltd (CPL) group managing director Mahesh Patel says the company will cut back on its capital investment this year due to economic uncertainties.
Patel said this when The National asked about an update on the progress of some of its projects.
“We are slowing down because of the uncertainty of the economy but when things start lifting up, we will push back,” he said.
“The market is not growing and we cannot grow if the market is not growing.
“If the market grows, then we will keep the investments going through.
“We are not going to stop, because we need to continue upgrading of our stores.
“Our warehouse, which we are committed to build, will carry on and that should finish by June.
“Overall, we will still be spending money but we will be conservative in where we spend.
“As far as growth goes, we will slow the growth down as well and just maintain what we’ve got.
“So the idea will be to maintain what you got and do it properly.
“Our effort will be to improve what we’ve got and spend a lot of time and energy in funds towards staff development and be ready for the next wave.”
Patel said this year would be tough compared to last year because there were currently no economic stimulus.
“Hopefully something comes but we are taking a very cautious and conservative approach to 2020 because we do not know what’s coming,” he said.
“In 2019, we finished the year off positive, we were expecting a much larger growth but we didn’t quite archive what we expected but there was a small growth.”
When asked about the foreign exchange situation, Patel said: “That’s still a challenge and even though a lot of people are saying that it is easing off, it’s tough.
“The problem is that we do not know the timeline of when we are going to access so we cannot make promises.”