Business at Chaktai-Khatunganj, the country's biggest wholesale market for consumer goods, has fallen to about half. Sales collapsed on Monday, the first day of the lockdown. Although markets for daily essentials are exempt from the lockdown, trading at the hub has dropped because traders from other districts and upazilas cannot come. Despite weak demand, prices of various goods are rising, particularly ginger, garlic and onion over the past few days. Traders said, however, that there is no shortage of any product.

Traders said business at Chaktai-Khatunganj is running on a limited scale. Compared with other days, sales, delivery orders (DOs) and trading halved on the first day of the lockdown. With no DO or slip trading in consumer goods, the sudden rises and falls in prices that used to happen are absent, but most prices have gone up.

Khatunganj-Chaktai supplies goods to the 11 districts of Chattogram division, including the three hill districts of Khagrachhari, Rangamati and Bandarban and the tourist city of Cox's Bazar. Many goods are also supplied from Khatunganj to the rest of the country.

On Monday, the first day of the week-long lockdown, no trucks arrived with goods from the port, and there were none waiting to take goods anywhere. Workers who load and unload goods sat idle. Wholesalers opened their shops, but there were no buyers. Normally, countless trucks wait on Khatunganj's roads every day to load and unload.

People involved in the trade said that on the day before the lockdown began, the price of Indian onion suddenly rose by Tk 2 a kg and that of local onion by Tk 4 a kg. Garlic jumped by Tk 5 at once, and Indian ginger rose by about Tk 14.

In Khatunganj, local onion was Tk 28 a kg two days earlier and sold at Tk 30 on Monday. Indian onion rose from Tk 29 to Tk 31 a kg. At wholesale, ginger that was Tk 46 is now selling at Tk 60 a kg, and garlic that was Tk 93 at Tk 98 a kg.

Meanwhile, among the goods needed for Ramadan, edible oil, sugar and pulses such as chickpea, pea, lentil and grass pea have become cheaper at wholesale, though this has had no effect on the retail market. At wholesale in Khatunganj, Australian chickpea is selling at Tk 2,200 to Tk 2,600 a maund depending on quality, against Tk 2,300 to Tk 2,700 a week ago. In other words, chickpea that was Tk 62-72 a kg is now selling at Tk 59-70. Myanmar chickpea sold at Tk 2,800 a maund a week ago and is now Tk 100 cheaper at Tk 2,700. Peas sold at Tk 1,500 a maund a week ago and now sell at Tk 1,400.

Md Idris, general secretary of the Khatunganj Hamid Ullah Bazar Arotdar Traders' Association, told Jugantor that business had fallen by almost half because of the lockdown. Traders from outside Chattogram cannot come to buy consumer goods, so trade has collapsed. But stocks of every consumer product exceed demand, and there is no shortage of anything.

Source: Jugantor. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.