Hyderabad: Soaring prices burn hole in smokers' pocket

Hyderabad: With pan shops closed, small-time kirana stores are selling cigarettes at higher rates. Cigarettes of major brands, which used to cost Rs 17 for a single stick before lockdown, are now being sold at a price anywhere between Rs 20 and Rs 25 in black market and kirana stores across the city.

In the wake of scarcity of cigarettes, prices in Hyderabad will soon rise manifold to anywhere between Rs 30 to 40, say traders. The stocks at the small grocery stores are depleting fast. "The situation is bad as all paan wallahs in our neighbourhood have shut shop. A few grocery stores are keeping stock but they sell it only to those they know and that too at a very high price," says Pranav Reddy, a resident of Safilguda, who paid about Rs 250 for a foreign brand pack that set him back by Rs 170.

"Our stock is about to finish currently there is no whole seller ready to sell goods as cigarettes are not a part of essential goods, In a day get a lot of customers coming to buy cigarettes but we sell only to the ones we know, because of the less stock and more demand we have to sell it at high price," said a shopkeeper in Anandbagh.