Bhubaneswar, Nov. 23: Wholesale markets are usually abuzz with trade during the wedding season. But this year is different. Traders have been hit hard by the demonetisation exercise.
Debaranjan Prusty, 40, a grocery wholesale trader at Unit-I market here had to turn away a family that had come to his shop to buy groceries for an forthcoming wedding feast.
"Although they were regular customers, I couldn't help but ask them to pay me in cash with valid currency notes," he said.
Prusty said the customers had wanted to buy groceries with the scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. "The customer did not have enough notes of the new denomination since they are arranging for a wedding and are, therefore, already short of valid currency notes," Prusty said.
Prusty's plight reflects the state of affairs at Unit-I wholesale market. The demonetisation exercise has affected business severely. "Business has gone down substantially by around 50 per cent with the old currency notes being banned now," Prusty rued.
The trader said customers looking to buy groceries in bulk were hesitant to pay through cheques and they did not have the new notes. "I cannot deliver them the goods unless the cheque is cleared. Some of them offer to pay through debit card, but I do not have a point of sale machine yet," Prusty said.
The rush for point-of-sale or debit card machines is considerable and Prusty said he was having a hard time getting his hands on one. "I am trying to procure a point-of-sale machine to tide my business over the current crisis but have not been able to get hold of one till now," he said.
Chinna Rao, 37, another wholesale grocery trader, echoed Prusty. He said the impact of demonetisation on business at the market had been huge. "The average business at my shop used to be around Rs 15,000 a day. That has now fallen to less than Rs 5,000," he said.
Ramesh Mohapatra, 65, a vegetable wholesaler, said small traders still wanted to transact through the now banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
"Since most small traders, who buy vegetables from here and sell it around the city, do not have enough valid currency, business has been affected," he said.
The wholesale market has more than 500 shops selling items ranging from grocery to vegetables. The volume of daily trade has fallen to Rs 5 lakh a day from Rs 10 lakh earlier, saidSudarshan Mishra, a member of the Unit-I market association. He said demonetisation had hit the market where most of the trade was done through cash. He said that while small traders selling vegetables at the market had recovered from the effects of demonetisation, the wholesale traders' sufferings would last for some time.
A bank employee dealing with the accounts of the local traders said their transactions at the bank had gone down considerably. He said transactions involving deposits in current accounts held by the traders had gone down by almost 40 per cent.
Demonetisation has also affected customers, who throng the market to buy items in bulk. Himanshu Dwibedi, 25, mechanical engineer and BJB Nagar resident, said he had come to the market to buy some groceries and vegetables for his nephew's birthday party. "While I did not face any problem buying vegetables, groceries was another story," he said.
Himanshu said that when he went to the wholesale grocery shop that his family had been relying on for the past decade or so, it turned him away because he had the old notes.
Another customer, Subrat Biswal, 58, said his son was getting married on November 28. "As if arranging finances for the wedding were not enough of a problem, traders here have stopped accepting old notes," he said.
Biswal said buying groceries from a supermarket would mean added expenditure as wholesellers usually gave a 20 per cent discount. "But what option do I have now? By going for my purchases to the supermarket, I am forced to increase my expenditure on groceries for the guests at my house by around Rs 5,000 a day," he said.
