BHUBANESWAR: With the confusion persisting over impact of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on various products, the consumers made a beeline before major retailers who also took the opportunity to go for the kill by offering heavy discounts before the strike of midnight. Most stores dealing with FMCG products, apparel and electronic goods reported brisk sales besides automobiles, including four-wheelers. While one of major FMCG stores, Big Bazaar, offered a discount of two per cent to 22 per cent on several products, electronics stores gave a discount upto 20 per cent.
The special GST Mahurat offer of Big Bazaar at seven stores in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, Rourkela and Keonjhar was valid for only two hours from 12.01 am to 2 am. Some of the wholesale dealers, who have a chain of stores in different towns of the State, like Gupta Distributors offered a whopping 50 per cent discount on selected items to clear their stocks before implementation of GST. It gave 30 pc discount on ACs and 20 pc on refrigerators and water purifiers. Other goods like television sets, gas stoves, mixture and grinders were available at 50 pc off.
The sale was, however, available for only nine hours. “We offered 10 to 20 pc discount on most of our electronic goods as we fear after GST, the price of products may go up. As the stock was piling up, we decided to go for discount sale and there was huge response from the consumers. We have cleared almost 90 pc of our stocks,” said a marketing executive of Great Eastern, a distributor at Bapuji Nagar here.
Traders claimed prices of electronic goods will increase by 13.5 pc as they have been classified under the highest bracket of 28 pc. Not only electronic goods, most of the items from apparels to footwear were available at discounted rates throughout the day. Even some branded wrist watches were offered for sale at 30 pc discount. Automobile manufacturers also offered huge discounts on various products so as to reduce the impact of new tax regime. Car and bike dealers offered discounts upto 20 pc not only on their lower segment models, but also on their premium models.