Jamaicans were hitting the ABMs heavily for cash to bolster last-minute spending on Christmas Eve, but merchants say that while the crowds may have been out, the demand for their goods was not as pressing as in past years.

“It is slow here,” said Gordon Tewani, who runs Mall Jewellers at the Mall Plaza in Kingston. The plaza, like most of the others along Constant Spring Road, uptown Kingston’s major shopping area, was packed with cars, and huge crowds milled about.

But mostly they were not buying, according to Tewani.

“I do not know if it is because of Ivan,” he said.

Hurricane Ivan may not have given Jamaica a frontal smack last September, but its raging winds and the storm surges they created left the island with billions of dollars worth of damage.

Some merchants say that spending on home repairs may have dampened outlays for gifts and other consumer durables this Christmas.

Central bank figures for cash in circulation, a rough gauge of the Christmas spending frenzy, were not available yesterday, but peaked at $32 billion at Christmas Eve 2003.

However, shoppers were expected on Christmas Eve to take between $200 million and $220 million from their bank accounts, using the MultiLink network that allows cross-bank ABM transactions, according to Edmundo Jenez, general manager of JETS – the firm that operates the MultiLink.

This would mean an increase in withdrawals via the system of between 31 per cent and 45 per cent and does not include transactions completed at ABMs at customers’ own banks. Additionally, there would have been spending via credit cards and cheques to add to people’s capacity to transact business during the last-minute crunch. But with inflation nearing double digits this year, the money would not have bought as much as in the past.

Jenez said that there has been a pattern of high use of ABMs in recent months, which will, this year, put his system’s transaction at record levels. “Cardholders are withdrawing funds at a steady pace,” he said. But store owners have largely claimed not to be feeling the impact.

“Perhaps the impact of Hurricane Ivan still persists, as many individuals may still be spending on storm-related damage or losses as funds become available,” Jenez said, offering a possibility for the significant use of ABMs without retailers seeing the cash piling up in their tills. But then, even hardware stores, where much of the cash would be expected to go, say they too are not seeing it.

In fact, an official at Mainland, a hardware and DIY superstore in St Catherine, claimed that their sales were perhaps 20 per cent this Christmas, compared to 2003.

“Sales at Mainland peaked immediately following the hurricane [in September],” he said. “Some of that money would have been used for Christmas but was used for rebuilding.”

There has been speculation, too, that some of the money that has gone into purchasing gifts, specialty foods, or in sprucing up homes, has gone to the light and power company in the face of high electricity bills over the past two months that has pitted Jamaica Public Service (JPS) against its customers.

That issue is now before the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), the utilities watchdog agency.

Whatever the reason, store owners said at Christmas Eve that they were not hearing that sweet sound of their cash registers ringing – at least not at the pace and volume they like.

“It is slow here,” said Calvin Morgan, manager at Sports & Games at the Willogate Shopping Plaza in Mandeville, the mid-island town.

“I do not know if it is Ivan and whether most people spent money on replacing roofs,” he added. “Sales have been down by 25 per cent below what we sold last year.”

Trevor Randle, who runs Watts New, a computer store in Tropical Plaza on the Constant Spring Road strip, saw the crowds, but not the commensurate spending.

“A lot of persons walking in,” he said.

But sales, if anything, were “on par with last year”, he said.