Dashain festival hit hard by post-pandemic price hike

KATHMANDU, Oct 1: Dashain is the biggest festival of Hindu Nepali. The festival is mostly popular for eating delicious foods, wearing new clothes and engaging in recreational activities. 

However, the sharp rise in the prices of daily essentials and other items has hit the widely celebrated festival hard this time. There is no crowd of people in the market as in the previous years. Ordinary public are not apparently joyful. This is the high time for the booming of business related to food and clothing but it has sharply gone down this time. 

"Price of all goods has increased significantly. On the other hand, people also do not have large sums of money," said food trader of Nilakantha Municipality-3, Puchharbazaar Sita Aryal. 'Total business has reduced by half this time as compared to previous years. Consumers who used to buy two cartoons of cooking oil in the previous years now are limited to one cartoon.

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Same trend is visible on the purchase of other edible items such as beaten rice," entrepreneur Aryal added. The first Dashain after the coronavirus pandemic has become costlier for general consumers. Consumers are being battered by high price hikes with the rise in the costs of daily consumption items. 

The price of excessive consumed goods has invariably gone up. Dashain has become costly with abrupt hikes in the price of pulses, rice, cooking oil, clothes and meat. 

Ashok Kumar Shrestha, an experienced business man in the headquarters Dhading district, shared that the price of imported commodities has risen in Nepal along with a hefty increase in the international market. Small entrepreneurs are also not able to level up the investment for business when import of goods has become tougher and expensive. Generally consumers are also not in a condition to buy their preferred goods. "Price hike has continued to hit the consumers hard," Shrestha said. 

It has already been too late for the government to put in place measures to contain the mounting price hike, said General-Secretary of Dhading Chamber of Commerce and Industry Tilak Simkhada.

(RSS)