Traders generated about Rs 72,000 crore amid robust sales across various sectors this Diwali despite Covid-19 pandemic, showed an internal survey by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT). The sales during this festive season gave China an expected loss of Rs 40,000 crore in view of ban on Chinese goods called by the traders’ body.
“Neither the traders sold Chinese goods nor the consumers demanded or bought Chinese goods. Only the last year’s leftover stock of Chinese goods might have been sold,” CAIT’s Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal told News18.
According to the traders, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ and his request to go ‘vocal for local’ gave a push to Indian goods, and fetched a significant growth in the sales. Another reason for the massive sales during Diwali was that those who could not do shopping during the coronavirus-induced lockdown came out in large numbers during the festive season.
Calling this season’s sale outcome “bumper”, Khandelwal said that the CAIT monitored markets across 20 different cities from November 9 to the day of Diwali. “We made 20 distribution centers (including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Nagpur, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Bhopal, Lucknow, Kanpur, Noida, Jammu, Ahmadabad, Surat, Cochin, Jaipur, Chandigarh). We gathered information from these distribution centers, which in turn, took inputs from the respective districts that fall under these cities. We monitored markets from November 9 to November 14 night and then we reached to the conclusion that this year’s sales can be termed bumper. Last year, it was around Rs 60-65 thousand crores,” he said.
All major indices on Stock Exchanges showed positive result during this season with the Nifty closing at 12,780 and Sensex at 43, 637.98, said CAIT, adding that the market is expected to touch 14,000 next Diwali owing to the “good signs of recovery on macro front and continuation of helicopter money.”
“The market has definitely picked up. It went beyond our expectation. Jewellers, especially, have had an average sale. The customers have turned up in significant numbers, especially in the last 3-4 days,” said VK Bansal, Secretary General, Federation of All India Vyapar Mandal(FAIVM).
Shop owners also saw a boom in business during his festive season. “We are almost back at pre-lockdown business-as-usual,” said 43-year-old Sachin Goel, who owns a wedding store in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk area. The couturier had received advance bookings for weddings during the months of January and February next year.
However, market was unaffected in a few areas where sales was still down. A toy shop owner in Noida, Vashishtha Kumar, said that he had incurred a loss of 70-75% this season. According to data released by CAIT, firecrackers’ vendors also suffered a loss of about Rs 10,000 crore.
FMCG, home appliances, utensils, gold and jewellery, garments, home decoration goods and clay ‘diyas’ were among the products that witnessed good sales during the festive season.
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