BENGALURU: Every day, Ramani buys one bag of garlic at Bangalore’s Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) market yard in Yeshwantpur and sells it in small quantities to small buyers. It’s an investment of Rs 5000 for her, a senior citizen. She makes a small profit on it and she gets by on it.
Once she has sold her bag, she goes back to the market to buy another and thus continues her cycle of existence. But things have changed for Ramani since Nov. 8 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government announced demonetization of high-value currency notes. It resulted in cash being sucked out of the market and buyers have become tight-fisted with the cash they have in hand.
Ramani has been stuck with a bag of garlic she bought 25 days ago, for credit from a stockist. “I used to sell a bag a day,” she said when New Indian Express visited the market yard on Thursday, a month after demonetization kicked in.
Her daughter Uma works in the same market as a daily wage worker. She used to make Rs 300 sifting onion at a stockyard. Work has been hard to find in the past one month. “I have not been able to make Rs 100 a day. It is a very tough life for me right now,” said Uma.
The APMC market is said to be south India’s biggest agricultural market. Spread over 93 acres houses 1,980 wholesale shops that employ nearly 2,000 workers and trade in a mind-boggling variety of things Indians need every month: onions, garlic, potatoes, rice, atta, sugar, pulses, chillies, jaggery, coconuts, you name it.
One month of demonetisation has left the bustling market wobbling, its business down 60 per cent from Rs 50 crore a day. Nearly 60 per cent of the business used to be done through cash.
The market’s assistant secretary, B N Krishnappa told New Indian Express, “There’s just no cash around. Today (Thursday), our overall turnover was less than Rs 20 crore. We used to do Rs 50 crore.“
A fortnight ago, when New Indian Express visited the market, the scenario had been similar but today a stoic acceptance of reality has set it. Debit and credit cards are being accepted now and traders said they are contemplating buying card swipe machines shortly.
Ramesh Chandra Lahoti, president of the Bangalore Wholesale Foodgrains and Pulses Merchants Association, said retailers not placing big orders because customers are holding on to any money they have. Stocks in the warehouses have dwindled. “It’s a panic situation,” he said.
Lahoti’s own company, Sunil & Co, used to purchase 3,000 bags (50 kg per bag) of sona masuri rice every month. Demand has fallen steeply since November 9 and he bought only 1,400 bags of rice in the last 30 days. He has cut his stock of dals down from 40 tonnes to 20.
Perishables like onions and potatoes continue to move but slowly. Purchases are down 40 per cent and mostly on credit, Krishnappa said. The market sources 52,391 quintals of onion per day (over 2.10 lakh bags) from Chitradurga, Bagalkot, Chalakere and Gadag districts at a cost of Rs 4.33 crore per day paid to farmers through the 100 commission agents based here. The quantity of purchases has remained the same in the demonetization month but post-dated cheques with a 45-day credit period are being handed out for about 40 per cent of the produce. The market used to accept 15-day post-dated cheques earlier.
The market’s Coconut Traders Association president V Manjunath said the coconut business has gone down by 50 per cent. Coconuts arrive in trucks from Tiptur, Kanakpura, Pandavapura, Channapatna, Mysuru and Hassan. His own business is continuing to tick but only because he accepts accepts cheques and demand drafts. “ I used to sell a minimum of 10,000 coconuts per day and a maximum of 50,000. In the past one month, my minimum has been 3,000 and the maximum has not crossed 25,000,” he said.