NEW DELHI: The boom in India’s retail sector will continue and top $365 billion in 2008, against $300 billion a year before, says a study by a leading industry chamber released on Monday.

With a year-on-year growth of 30-35 per cent, the retail trade sector in India will top $440 billion by 2010, says the study by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).

“The retail industry size in calendar 2007, particularly in its organised retail segment, is around less than 5 per cent, which works out to be slightly more than $16 billion,” said chamber president Venugopal N Dhoot.

He also said the organised retail players occupied a space of 1 million sq ft in 2002, which shot up to nearly 14 million sq ft by calendar 2007.
This, he said, was likely to grow to 16 million sq ft in 2008.

Large players like Reliance Industries, Plaza, DLF and Spencer, and new-entrant in the field, the Aditya Birla Group, would embark on a major expansion drive in their retail businesses in 2008, Dhoot added.

The study estimated the organised retail segment would witness an additional investment of $70 billion by 2010. In 2008, the investment size would be in the region of $25-28 billion.

The study also estimated that that the share of retail trade in the country’s gross domestic product, currently at between 8-10 per cent, will jump up to some 12 per cent soon and to 22 per cent by 2010.

The study also estimated that rural retail would continue to be driven by the unorganised segment for some time, and grow to $36 billion by 2008 and top $45 billion in 2015, from the present size of $30 billion.