Our transactions have dropped by over 50 percent, said an official at Sajangoth Sweet Shop at Tripureswor, who disclosed that the shop´s turnover till a week ago used to be about Rs 60,000 a day. “Fewer people are consuming sweets since the recent scandal of food adulteration in sweets broke out,” he stated.[break]
The drop in demand has been recorded not just in case of retailers. It has hurt the wholesale business of packed foods as well. Also, snacks orders that offices used to place are down considerably. Except for a few regular customers, new persons visiting sweets shops have almost dipped to nil, said Ashok Jhunjhunwala, manger of Aangan Sweets that run a chain of sweets shops in the Kathmandu valley.
“Mistakes committed by some sweets makers has cost the whole business dearly,” he told Republica, adding that all four outlets of Aangan Sweets in the valley have suffered a drop in turnover by around 20 percent.
And, what Jhunjhunwala is worried about most is not the current drop in sales but the impact it can have on the business during the upcoming festivals. Dashain, which is just two weeks away, is one of the best business times for sweets shops, and Tihar that follows Dashain is only a month away.
The sweets market is currently trying to absorb an unprecedented jolt mainly after market inspection authorities found bacteria and other contamination at hazardous levels in Gudpak produced and sold by two most popular outlets in New Road. Anmol, a popular sweets shop, was found to have used substandard raw materials and poor quality ghee in the sweets.
Aggressive inspection that the authorities have launched two weeks ago had also found Rameshworam and numerous other sweets shops of having unhygienic production and post-production environment, something which render their products unfit for consumption.
And, disclosure of such findings had such a huge impact on outlets like Shree Ram Bhandar -- one of the oldest sweets shops in the valley -- that their business dropped by more than 50 percent, despite having a long standing goodwill.
Numerous sweets shops vented ire against Anmol and Gudpak producers, among others, arguing that their ´betrayal´ to consumers have badly eroded the consumer confidence. Some of them even charged the market inspectors with generalizing the findings of some shops, saying such generalization is the main reason for the present gloom in the sweets business.
However, not all traders are sore with market inspections.
“The latest inspection drive and actions against wrongdoers are really praiseworthy. It will do a lot of good to fair players who are sensitive about consumer health,” said Sangam Chaulagain, director of Sangam Sweets that operates two outlets in the valley.
Suraj Vaidya, president of Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI), said the malpractice by sweets makers and sellers is a serious crime, and wrongdoers must get a strong punishment. “But the government is equally responsible for the present mess,” he said.
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