Bhubaneswar, Oct. 24: The rise in prices of firecrackers has failed to defuse the Diwali spirit in the capital. Despite a 40 per cent hike, traders are hopeful that they would do brisk business in the run up to Diwali.

A steep rise in wages, increase in the price of raw materials and rise in transportation costs has added to the cost of crackers. “Apart from licence fee, transportation cost is a major reason for inflated cracker prices,” said Ganesh Chandra Routray, a cracker shop owner.

The authorities have issued licences to 698 shops in the city and outskirts for selling crackers. Most of the cracker shop owners have invested around Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh on an average to open roadside shops. “If one makes a rough estimation of all the transactions, business is likely to go up to nearly Rs 14 crore to Rs 15 crore,” said Ramesh Rout, one of the leading cracker sellers in the city. He has been in the cracker business for the last 15 years.

Though cracker shops opened two days ago, sales are yet to the pick up momentum. However, Ganesh is hopeful crackers will start moving off the shelves fast one day before Diwali. Most of the crackers being sold at the city come from Shivkasi in Tamil Nadu. Though crackers are made locally in parts of Jatani of Khurda district and Padampur of Cuttack district, the products have failed to match demand. At the same time, a huge amount of tax levied during transportation has reduced the demand of locally-made crackers. Only palm leaf crackers have a huge demand in the city; these are made at Padampur.

Crackers are being sold at a price ranging from Rs 50 to Rs 15,000. Fancy crackers such as the conical ones (anar), earth wheel crackers and rockets have a huge demand in the city. Thread bombs are almost invisible in the market, as the authorities have limited the noise level at 125 decibel.

City residents, especially the youth, are not happy about the restrictions on crackers emitting loud noise. “Diwali comes only once in a year and it’s unfortunate that the noisy bombs are banned,” said Lagnajit Sahoo, a college student.