The line graph illustrates how many shops were locked compared with how many they were opened over seven years, starting from 2011. Overall, considerable fluctuations in the quantity of shops’ closures and openings were witnessed across the given period although closure variations were more prominent than opening variations. Moreover, the openings of shops started with higher numbers while the closures of shops ended with higher ones.
In 2011, the number of closed shops exceeded 6000 shops. However, it experienced a marginal decrease in the first year to exactly 6000 shops, followed by hitting a peak at just more than 7000 shops in 2013. In 2014, the number of shops which were closed was closed to the number of opened shops at slightly over 6000 shops. In the next year, closed shops bottomed out to just below 1000 shops. Unlike, in 2016, it recorded a rapid escalation up to over 5000. Thereafter, in the last two years, about 5000 shops were closed.
In terms of openings, although in 2011, the number of shops were the highest compared with the whole quantities by reaching well over 8000 shops, it suffered from a dramatic drop to be around 4000 opened shops. During the next 24 months, they recorded a considerable rise to hovering around 6000 shops. After that, the numbers exhibited a sharp fall to exactly 4000 shops, followed by relatively constant numbers until 2017. In the last year, a gradual decline was evident to be 2000 opened shops.