Pick n Pay chair Gareth Ackerman has called for the ban on the weekend sale of alcohol in stores to be lifted, saying it makes “no sense”.
He was speaking at the virtual presentation of the retailer’s first-half results from March to August, which saw a 20% fall in revenue as a result of lockdown trading restrictions on items such as alcohol and clothing.
This is the second time Ackerman has publicly criticised lockdown regulations made by the government that appear to be contradictory, unscientific and bad for business.
“The same customer is perfectly free to go to a tavern, club or bar on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday and consume alcohol on the premises. Ministers have never explained this discrepancy, and so it has never been understood by the public,” Ackerman said.
The government fully banned alcohol sales from March 27 to May 31 and again from July 12 to August 16 to reduce the number of alcohol-fuelled trauma patients being admitted to hospital and create space for Covid-19 patients.
Bottle stores can now sell alcohol for off-site consumption from 9pm to 5pm on Mondays to Fridays.
Ackerman said people would not respect or uphold Covid-19 regulations if rules appeared illogical. “We need the Covid-19 restrictions to be understood and supported more today than ever before.”
Those who work and cannot buy alcohol in these strict hours are forced to buy illegally.
The CEO of the SA Liquor Brand Owners Association (Salba) representing bottle stores, Kurt Moore, recently warned that the weekend ban of “off-site consumption sale of alcohol continues to provide an opportunity for the illicit networks to expand”.
Ackerman said business would play its role to combat the pandemic, but the government needed to meet its end of the bargain.
“We will play our part in ensuring that our staff and customers observe the hygiene and other rules for as long as needed.”
But “the government has a duty to ensure that their rules are justifiable and proportionate”.
In August, during the second alcohol ban, he also criticised the government’s prohibitions on the sale of tobacco products and liquor.
The group reported a 2.6% rise in turnover to R44.2bn in its six months to end-August.
Excluding its one-off voluntary severance package, costs of R100m and hyperinflation in its Zimbabwean supermarket business, there was a 38.6% drop in comparable headline earnings per share.
But its core sales of food and groceries excluding tobacco, clothing and alcohol, which were banned, grew year on year by 9.9%.
Pick n Pay CEO Richard Brasher said when trading restrictions were excluded, the company's performance showed a resilient business.
“In terms of the underlying performance, [this shows that] when we can sell something, we sell it well.”
Even as profit after tax fell 59% to R158.7m, the retailer paid an interim dividend and also the deferred full-year dividend it had held back due to uncertainty about the coronavirus crisis.
On the ban of alcohol and tobacco, Brasher said “honest, taxpaying [and] legitimate businesses should never be disadvantaged significantly to the benefit of criminals”.
He said the bans were “to ensure people didn’t smoke too much or drink too much, [but] that wasn’t the reality”.
“The legitimate businesses did what they were told and the rest did what they liked.”
Ackerman said it would take “years” to undo consumers’ shift towards the buying of illegal cigarettes that was encouraged by an almost five-months-long prohibition of tobacco sales.
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