Post-pandemic price hike hits Dashain

Dashain is the biggest festival of the Hindus. This festival is mostly popular for eating delicious foods, wearing new clothes and engaging in recreational activities. However, abrupt price hike has hit hard during the wake of this widely celebrated festival, this time around.

There is no crowd of people in the market as there was in the previous years. The general public are gradually not happy.

This is a high time and chance for the booming of business related to food and clothes but it has sharply gone down this time. "Price of all goods has immoderately increased, and on the other hand, people do not have large amount of money", said Food Trader of Nilakantha municipality-3, Puchharbazaar Sita Aryal.

'Total business has reduced by half this time in comparison to the last year. Consumers who used to buy two cartoons of cooking oil in the previous years, now are limited to a cartoon. 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 more costly for general consumers. Consumers are being battered by high price hike with the rise in the costs of daily consumptive items.

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

Ashok Kumar Shrestha, an experienced businessperson of headquarters Dhadingbesi, shared that the price of imported commodities has elevated in Nepal along with hefty increase in the international market.

Small entrepreneurs are also not being able to level up the investment for business when import of good has become tougher and expensive. Generally consumers are also not in a condition to buy their preferred goods.

"Price hike has continued to hit hard to the consumers", Shrestha said.

It has been already 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.

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