Traders still left in the lurch

Vijayawada: Thousands of traders in the city are losing hope on recovery of trading activity in future as there is no improvement in sales after trading activity collapsed due to demonetisation since November 8.

Sale of textiles, footwear, gold, furniture, fancy items, mobiles, electrical and electronics goods drastically declined for the past 50 days.

When Prime Minister Modi announced that it will take 50 days time to recover from the demonetisation impact, people believed that their problems will be solved to some extent.

Unfortunately, there is no improvement on the trading activity even on the 50th Day of demonetisation. Most of the traders in the busy Beasant Road in the city are left without business.

Beasant Road witnesses heavy rush during the evenings. The rush will be very high during the festival season as hardly customers get space to walk in the busy street.

But, on Wednesday, the road wore a deserted look due to lack of customers.
November and December is the busy season for sales in the city which is considered the commercial capital.

The city is dotted with more than 500 retail and wholesale cloth and readymade garments shops. In all, 400 gold shops, 300 mobiles and electrical shops do brisk business during the festival season.

But now, there is no business. The traders are worried how to pay rent, power bills, salaries to the staff and taxes at the end of the financial year without sales and income.

Lakhs of customers not only from Krishna district, but also from Guntur, West Godavari and Khammam districts come to Vijayawada for shopping during the festival season of Christmas, New Year and Sankranti.

Unfortunately, cash crunch drastically affected the trading activity. Lakhs of people are still struggling to withdraw Rs 2,000 a day from the banks and ATMs due to currency crunch.

The RBI limit of Rs 24,000 a week for withdrawing money is another biggest obstacle for the trading activity. People are not able to get small denomination notes even after 50 days of demonetisation of high value notes.

Had the government released Rs 500 currency notes instead of Rs 2,000 new notes, the situation could have been better, said A Krishna Rao, a textile trader at Arundalpet.

He said lakhs of people are suffering due to not availability of small denomination notes. Unexpected note ban announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi spell a doom to the petty traders, as did not have swiping machines.

Big shops and shopping malls, which use swiping machines or e-PoS machines, are able to manage their trading activity as their customers habituated to it.

Besides, big shopping malls are offering year-end discounts to attract the customers. But, small traders can’t offer discounts due to financial constraints.

Footpath traders are the worst affected in the city as most of their customers are the poor.

The poor are losing their daily wages due to lack of work since November 8. Md Afsar, an optical trader on Eluru Road, said it was disappointing season for the traders.

He said the business fell by more than 70 per cent during the last 50 days and felt there is no hope that situation will change in near future.