Bloody Mall, forced to free rent money

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - The mall business in DKI Jakarta is truly bloody with the Covid-19 pandemic. All restrictions during pandemic control have made business worse off. Visitors are quiet, making tenants affected, in the end there are problems with rental fees, finally there is a manager who waives temporary rental fees.

 

 

Ellen Hidayat, chairman of the Association of Indonesian Shopping Centers for DKI Jakarta, was outspoken about the difficulties of managing a shopping center in the midst of a pandemic. Although the mall is allowed to remain open at this time, visitors who come are still quiet. The policy of not eating in place or dine in at restaurants has a significant effect on the interest of visitors to the mall.

 

 

"So it turns out that when dine-in is not allowed to eat on the spot, you can only take away and it turns out that most of the dine-ins are difficult to deliver or take away. So that all 95% of the restaurants are dine in. closed for a while and it turned out to have a very broad impact, "he said.

Under these conditions, the impact to mall visits is significant. It is said that the mall traffic is so low that it only reaches between 15% to 20% that at the time of dine in is not permitted. In fact, he emphasized that the mall is not part of the Covid-19 cluster.

 

 

"We need to convey that the shopping center in DKI is not a Covid-19 cluster. So this has frankly caused tenants and shopping center managers to experience very, very tough times," he explained. It was said, at the beginning of the pandemic, mall managers had actually helped tenants. This is done to keep the tenants breath longer in running their business wheels.

"The policies are of course not the same, depending on the ability and readiness of shopping centers where generally rental discounts and service charge discounts are also given to tenants," he said.

 

 

"So for shopping centers it can also be said that for the past 7 months, from the end of March to the present we have been helping the tenants by freeing rent, say so or discounting the rent and service charge, on average it has reached 5 months. up to 6 months of rent or service charge, "he explained. Along the way, his party had a bright spot with the existence of a transitional PSBB before September 14, 2020. Since then, tenants together with mall managers have the optimism of fighting together.

"But unfortunately then there is another with the tightening of the PSBB. It really makes both the shopping center and the tenants breathe very hard," he complained.