Double whammy for fruit vendors

​Mahbunagar: For about 300-400 fruit vendors in Mahbubnagar district, both wholesalers and retailers, it has been a double whammy as the division of the district and the ills of demonetization have negatively impacted sales with disastrous consequences.

Prior to the division of the erstwhile Mahbubnagar district, every day hundreds of fruit vendors used to buy their requirement from four major wholesale points in the district.

After the district was divided into four smaller districts of Mahbubnagar, Nagarkurnool, Wanaparthy and Gadwal, the sales from these major vendors have fallen by more than half. The main reason for this is that new wholesale points have emerged in the new districts.

“Earlier we used to get buyers from all parts of Nagarkurnool, Wanaparthy and Gadwal to buy fruits from our wholesale point, but after reorganisation of the districts, this has stopped and our sales have fallen drastically. After demonetisation this has further hit our sales.

It is becoming very tough for the ‘bandiwalas’ to earn even Rs.150-200 per day, after excluding their product costs. Earlier, they used to earn anywhere between Rs 500-600 per day,” says Vahid Ali, a wholesale fruit point owner in Mahbubnagar.

Earlier, the wholesale point owners used to buy at least 400-600 boxes of apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, pomagranates, sapotas etc from Kottapeta and supply it to the local sellers.

However, after reorganisation and demonetization, sales have come down by 70 per cent in the district. “These days, we are not even able to sell 100 boxes.

Every month, we need to pay about Rs. 20 lakh at the Kothapeta fruit market to procure our fruit stocks in advance. However, due to fall in sales we are not able make this payment and are facing difficulty,” said Vahid.

Everyday each local wholesale fruit point appoints at least 20-50 small bandiwalas and gives them some amount of fruit products for sale in different localities, even in small villages.

‘Bandiwalas’ bemoan that the release of Rs. 2,000 value note following demonetization has done major harm to small businesses.

“Even though the customers are coming to buy fruits, because of the high value Rs. 2,000 note, we are facing severe small change shortage.

Even though they buy fruits worth of Rs. 100 or 150, we need to give back 1900 change; for petty businesses like ours, it is hard to give so much back in smaller denominations.

Because of this, our business has been hit hard,” observed Mohammad Vazir, a small roadside fruit seller.