In recent years, many small local shops have closed because customers travel to large shopping centres or malls to do their shopping. Is this a positive or a negative development?

Recently, many small scale shops have been driven out of business since clients prefer to do their shopping in large scale commercial areas or malls. In my view,

this

is a negative move as it creates unemployment, loss of revenues, and insecurity cases.

To begin

with, many people in developing countries are employed in local businesses, so when customers opt to do shopping in malls, they will definitely lose their

jobs

. These business people will end up losing their source of income, as they will lack buyers.

This

is common in Kenya, mostly in urban areas where many malls are emerging, and

this

will worsen the case.

Furthermore

, it means that they will

also

struggle to service their bills, too. Another problem is that there will be rampant cases of insecurity, both in urban and rural areas. When people, especially the youth, lack

jobs

, they may engage in criminal activities like mugging and robbery with violence. In Kenya,

for instance

, there are many young individuals who rely on small scale businesses, and in case these sources of livelihoods are cut off, many will resort to unlawful activities.

In addition

to the above, the governments will lose revenue in form of VAT taxes. Once these

jobs

are lost, the governments will lose millions of income, which could have been used to construct physical infrastructures. In most

third

world countries,

for example

, we mostly depend on foreign aid;

hence

, if we do not generate adequate local revenues, we shall still rely on rich countries for financial support. In summary, the closure of local shops, as customers move to big shopping establishments, is not good because it leads to loss of

jobs

, revenues, and cropping up of insecurity cases.