Demonetisation to haunt traders one more month

Vijayawada: Aftershocks of demonetisation appears hard to dissipate. They are likely to haunt traders and small businesses for at least one more month, thanks to the inept handling of currency crisis, especially small denomination currency notes by bank authorities and governments.

The business activity at lower level came to a standstill in the capital city of Vijayawada. The demand for currency has made many businesses seize to exist.

“People stopped shopping unless there is a demand for any article, including household articles. They are giving top priority to buy household (regularly used) articles apart from provisions with whatever money they could manage to draw from their accounts. The seriousness of the problem is gauged by the fact that they have been a lion’s share of their time standing in serpentine queues at banks and ATMs. Earlier, they used to shop to kill the time,” commented a shop owner Ramu.

“The patience of the customers should be appreciated. Even though the queues are very long, people were getting the currency either from ATMs or from banks only to pay for essential things. Our regular customers coming to us with a request to pack rice in lesser quantity rather than ordering for big bags they used to do pre-demonetisation. The small quantity requests show that they want to spend money in a judicious manner as they had no means of getting extra currency from their accounts,” Venkatrao, a rice trader said.

An internet centre owner put it in a different way: “I know many of my customers who spend a lion’s share of their time at my kiosk. Though most of them are young, they lost the track of time browsing with my systems. I have to remind them about the closing time of the kiosk. Now you can see what happened,” he said showing the kiosk which wore a deserted look. “No doubt, most of their time goes waste waiting in queues in front of the ATMs,” he added.

The refugees of Tibet, who came here for business, have no swiping machines. They accept cash only for every purchase of wool products near Dharna Chowk. The business was badly hit because of demonetisation, a refugee businessman said. “Many customers were returning when we decline card payment,” said the owner of a stall.

Chicken and mutton business is another victim of the demonetisation. “We are not buying more birds as we used to do. The market is in slump. Everybody wants to save money and not opting for mutton which is costly. Though the price of chicken is dipped further, there are no takers if we speak frankly,” said Basha, a mutton/chicken kiosk owner.

Noor Shaik