By Laxman Kafle
Kathmandu, Mar. 13 : The market of essential commodities in the capital has turned normal in recent days although rumours about the shortage of essential goods are still making rounds. However, until the festival of Fagu the capital dwellers were busy buying goods to stock fearing coronavirus outbreak.
The consumers seem to have believed the government that there would be no shortage of everyday goods in the market and stopped stocking goods unnecessarily.
The government and the business community recently asked the consumers not to hoard everyday goods at their homes as the present stock of goods was enough for at least six months and supply was normal.
However, the cooking gas consumers have been complaining that they are not getting gas from the distributors for a week.
At 10:00 am Thursday, at the sales outlet of Salt Trading Corporation (STC) in Kalimati only a small number of consumers were there to buy cooking gas and other daily goods such as sugar, salt, oil and rice.
Immediately after the sale began at the counter at 10:30, all the consumers got the required goods and left the counter within half an hour. The crowd of consumers at this STC outlet to purchase goods has been decreasing day by day in the last two days, said Rukmini Ghimire, an STC employee.
“Household consumers and retailers are coming here to purchase salt, sugar, rice, and cooking gas. Some people visit three/four times in a day to get cooking gas. But we do not give gas to the same persons on the same day if we recognize him/her,” she said.
She said that a consumer normally bought at least four packets of salt, two/four kilograms of sugar and three/four litres of oil.
Any consumer visiting the outlet was returning in 10 minutes carrying the required goods. According to Ghimire, the consumers used to spend at least one hour to get what they needed until three days ago.
A consumer, Nabaraj Gautam, who had arrived at STC outlet Kalimati from Kupandole, Laitpur, bought five packets of salt, five litres of oil, a sack of rice and two kilograms of sugar.
According to him, he reached the outlet to purchase goods citing that it was easier to purchase necessary goods there.
Brajesh Kumar Jha, divisional manager of STC, said that sales of STC’s outlets had increased by four times until Monday but now they have fallen. “Daily sales of STC through its outlets reached Rs. 1.2 million due to an increase in the sales following the fear of coronavirus. At other times, the daily sales will be around only Rs. 250,000,” he said.
The STC is selling STC brand cooking gas, oil, salt, sugar and rice through its four outlets at Kalimati, Suryabinak, Jadibuti and Satungal. “The STC has enough stock of salt and sugar to meet the demand of at least 10 months. Around 155,000 tonnes of salt and 10,000 tonnes of sugar is in the stock,” he said.
The government should force the sugar mills to disclose their stock of sugar to manage the market, he said.

No shoppers in wholesale market
Even the markets of Kalimati and Kuleshwor areas had no crowd of consumers at the shops. Shankar Goyal of Sarika Trade Link said that the inflow of people at almost all food stores of Kuleshwor had decreased sharply after the Fagu.
“The sales volume of daily essential goods had increased by fourfold last week, but now they have dropped below normal,” he said.
Many consumers panicked by the COVID-19 had purchased goods enough for two/three months and others who were planning to follow suit stopped buying goods after the government assured that there will not be dearth of goods,” he said.
Aayush Food Store of Kalimati owned by Santosh Kumar Sah had no client at noon on Thursday. Sah said that there were enough goods in the market as the supply of goods was normal and no one was in a hurry to purchase daily goods.
A snack trader of Kalimati, however, had a different story to share. He said the sales of snacks dropped significantly following the COVID-19 rumours. According to him, when people focused only on buying foods and gas, they gave no importance to snacks.

Consumers not getting gas in time
However, many consumers said that they were unable to get cooking gas without waiting for one to two weeks against the claims of the Nepal Oil Corporation that it had increased the supply. It was also noticed during the filed visit.
One Prabash Bahadur Singh reached the STC’s Kalimati outlet to purchase gas of STC brand after the local distributor told him that he had no gas at his shop.
According to him, when his two cylinders became empty he visited the outlet hoping to get gas there as he had them during the 2015 border blockade.
STC has been distributing gas to individuals from its outlets in retail.
Jha said that the STC has been distributing around 300 gas cylinders from its Kalimati outlet daily. The STC used to sell less than 100 cylinders a day before the coronavirus outbreak in neighbouring countries.
Gayatri Banjara of Gatthaghar said that she was unable to get cooking gas for four days after she paid the price of a cylinder of gas. According to her, she paid the distributor on Sunday but she was not given the gas by Thursday evening.