The Pangasinan Star ONLINE

IF the city government fails to take containment measures soon, the spanking new Malimgas market could become a ‘ghost market’ in under a year.

Vendors at the less than one-year old three-storey public market here claim they are losing in their business stalls, owing to the stiff rental rate and lack of customers.

A city councilor, Alex de Venecia, chairman on markets of the city council, said the vendors, especially at the second floor of the market, are seeking reduction of their stall rentals because only few people are buying goods from them, contrary to earlier expectations.

They are seeking as much as 50 percent reduction in rental fees for them to at least break even in business.

The city council however said this is impossible to grant because the city government will have difficulty sourcing out funds to be able to pay the amortization of the P300 million loan it obtained from the Land Bank of the Philippines for the construction of the project.

With sellers outnumbering buyers in the second floor of the market, it is really difficult to survive in this present economic crisis, the Malimgas vendors said.

Even the third floor of the establishment intended as a parking area is not being patronized by motorists.

A centralized air-conditioning system and a functional escalator just like those in commercial malls has failed to attract buyers. Not even lilting tunes in radio jingles produced by City Hall’s favorite media promo contractors has convinced customers to go to the public market.

The vendors told the city council in a committee hearing last Monday that at least 46 stalls there had already been closed because their owners cannot afford to continuously pay high rentals without making any sale at all.

They said that if business continues to be slow, there would be no more stalls left there by December.

De Venecia noted that vendors are blaming the unfair competition from ambulant peddlers who are supposed to be weeded out by a task force of the city government but has so far failed to do after an initial burst of action by the team.

A bigger competition though is coming from surrounding private commercial malls that sell goods and even fish, meat and vegetables at much cheaper prices than the retail stalls in the new public market.