FMCG growth had been under pressure after the festival season owing to inflationary trends as well as the large amounts of stock that were built up in stores. This prevented new stocks from being billed into stores, as liquidation of festive stocks was the priority.

This liquidation has happened for a few categories, and we are now seeing strong stocking of products for some categories already.

However, we still do see challenges in the consumption of Discretionary products, where sales remain under pressure in the challenging inflationary environment.

Going forward, we do expect that 2023 will see the focus coming back to consumption-led growth, rather than continuing the focus of 2022 which was on price-led growth.

This would mean that consumers will need to be offered greater value to induce greater consumption.