The US supermarket giant WalMart is an incredibly efficient machine which threatens community life in any market it enters, a retail conference was told yesterday.

Mr Bob Ortega, an investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal and author of a book on the Wal-Mart phenomenon, warned domestic retailers that sooner or later the company would come to the Republic and they needed to be ready.

He said the company was absolutely obsessive about costcutting. He added that the small size of the Republic's retail market would not deter WalMart.