In an unusual reversal of Christmas shopping trends, uptown businesses appeared to be doing better than their counterparts downtown as the Yuletide shopping stepped up a gear yesterday.

“Business is booming,” a smiling Ehlam Scott, sales representative at the Tropical Plaza Digicel outlet, told the Sunday Observer while shoppers milled about the store.

Store managers and owners of record shops, jewellery stores and other businesses in the shopping malls along Constant Spring Road all echoed the same sentiment.

Fast-food stores also did good business with most of them experiencing long lines inside the stores and at drive-through windows.

But while some businesses in the downtown shopping area also reported brisk sales, vendors, recently removed from the shopping district’s streets and sidewalks, say their source of income has all but dried up.

“We a suffer down here, from them move us off the streets we a dead fi hungry like dog,” a licensed higgler in the Buck Town vendors arcade on Peters Lane said.

But notwithstanding the reported softer street sales downtown, the currency in circulation began to increase last week in tandem with the rise in the Christmas shopping tempo.

According to the central bank, up to Thursday, a full week before Christmas, $27.338 billion in notes and coins were in the hands of Jamaicans. This was approximately 17 per cent more than the $23.35 billion which was in circulation on December 19 last year – a day later in the shopping season.

In fact, at the start of the last business week on December 15, just over $25 billion in currency was in circulation, meaning the notes and coins held by Jamaicans jumped by over $2.3 billion or 9.3 per cent between Monday and Thursday.

Currency in circulation does not indicate the total spending power available to consumers, with their access to credit cards, cheques and other forms of money instruments. But however much more cash and credit Jamaicans get their hands on this Christmas, a sharp rise in prices will mean that they will get less in goods and services for equivalent spending last year.

For instance, inflation for the first nine months of the year ran at over 10 per cent and is expected to close the year mildly higher than that figure, providing the country with the first double-digit inflation since 1996.

But yesterday, the shopping spree was on in earnest, in uptown and downtown Kingston. Indications were that businesses were experiencing brisk sales in the major towns across Jamaica.

In downtown Kingston, vendors largely obeyed instructions to remain in designated areas. Yesterday over 150 police officers from the Island Special Constabulary Force, Mobile Reserve, Area 4 and Kingston Central patrolled the tough city streets, ensuring that the sidewalks remained clear, as directed by Mayor Desmond McKenzie and his Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC).

Police constable, Kaedene Hendricks, who patrolled sections of Beckford Street and Peters Lane, reported that the heavy police presence had brought a decrease in robberies, and pickpockets had gone into hiding.

“We have not experienced any pickpockets or robberies since we have been here,” Hendricks said.

The improved security environment downtown is apparently helping the formal businesses.

Store owner, Michael Ammar Snr, owners of Ammars on King Street, told the Sunday Observer that the removal of the vendors from the store fronts had enhanced his enterprise.

“Business is not bad. Better access to the sidewalk brought back some of our old time customers who are happy to know they can return downtown,” Ammar said yesterday.

The usually busy streets and sidewalks were taken over by hordes of people trudging from store to store. But many appeared to be window shopping and Simone Grandison, who spoke with this reporter, said she was operating on a tight budget.

“I have no money this year. All my money has been spent on clothes and food. I can’t buy presents for anybody,” a sombre-looking Grant shouted above the din.

Some vendors defied the presence of the security forces and engaged them in a cat and mouse game.

“We move when we see the police coming. We can’t stay one place,” one teenage girl, who peddled female underwear and t-shirts along Beckford Street, said. As the girl spoke, a woman constable attempted to approach her and the woman quickly left and melted into the heavy crowd.

Other vendors walked with the stock in bags and tried to silently solicit customers.

“Me have two young girl pickney, four and eight and me must stand up for them as a mother so if me even have to take a chance for them, a just so,” Sandra Brown, a determined vendor exclaimed.

Yesterday, over 20 vehicles were towed away after drivers left the car in non-parking zones. The vehicles were taken to the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation car pound where they will be held until they are claimed by their owners who will have to fork out $4,500 plus $300 each day a car is impounded and $5,000 plus $300 each day a van is impounded.