Bumper Diwali spending of Rs 2.5 lakh crore expected

New Delhi, Oct 14 (IANS) The ongoing Diwali festival season is all set to bring cheers for the trading community of the country as it is expected that there will be fresh infusion of about Rs 2.5 lakh crore in the markets by way of shopping and sale of goods and usage of services, said the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT).

This substantial inflow of money is also expected to liberate the business community from financial crunch.

After two years, the festival of lights will be celebrated with no Covid restrictions which has prompted consumers to throng commercial markets in every city of the country for making purchases for Diwali.

CAIT said the hike in DA by the Centre of 4 per cent on October 8 and another announcement of the government about Productivity-Linked Bonus (PLB) equivalent to 78 days of wages to non gazetted railway employees for financial year 2021-22 is going to help the consumers in their spending during the festive season.

It will certainly trigger the market and the economy. These two decisions of the government will pump thousands of crores of rupees into the economy.

The increasing urbanisation will boost demand for vehicles & real estate and will increase economic activity in urban areas. The bumper agriculture crop is expected to bring money in rural India and it is expected that much of the liquidity accrued to these sectors will in turn boost the festivity sales.

CAIT said that as per an estimate, the Diwali festivity business is expected to register a whopping turnover of more than Rs. 1.5 lakh crore and more than Rs 1 lakh crore is expected to be incurred on travel and other services.

As per a report released by FADA recently, overall retails of Automobiles increased by a massive 57 per cent during the period of Navratri.

All categories also showed extremely high growth with 2W, 3W, CV, PV and Tractors increasing by 52 per cent, 115 per cent, 48 per cent, 70 per cent and 58 per cent, respectively.

These figures show expected robust business during Diwali festivity. As per an estimate about 5 crore gifts from small to high range of all sorts of items are being exchanged during the festival period which does form a substantial contribution to the Diwali sales.

Such growth is attributed to the sale of Indian products having no influence of any Chinese product.

Indian traders and consumers are going to create a loss of about 60 thousand crores of rupees business to China which earlier China was exporting to India pertaining to Diwali sales.

The change in consumer behaviour for not opting for Chinese goods post Galwan incident has contributed a lot in sales promotion of Indian products, CAIT said.