BOTTOMLINE: WHITE GOODS ARE THE WORST HIT IN THE STATE, DESPITE THE CII’S BEST EFFORTS

Gold twinkles bright in Gujarat, cars shine too

Jyotsna Bhatnagar

While both south and north India are gloomily pondering sales graphs that seem to have lost their usual festive zip, Gujarat, and most particularly Ahmedabad, remain optimistic. For, the festive season and the just-round-the-corner marriage season have lent a sparkle to the otherwise lacklustre sales in Gujarat’s gold market.

In Ahmedabad alone, the daily turnover has increased to 700-800 TT bars daily from a mere 100-200 TT bars just about a month ago. It is expected that by Diwali, this will increase to 1,000 TT bars per day. For, in Gujarat, Dhanteras, which falls just two days before Diwali, is considered an extremely auspicious day for buying both gold and gold ornaments. Tanishq and local jewellery outlets are already advertising heavily in order to make the most of the opportunity.

While acknowledging that surging global prices and the falling rupee in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks have contributed to the overall sluggish demand, traders and jewellers in Gujarat are still fairly optimistic about an upsurge in demand now. However, they admit that even the festival demand this year will be only 25 per cent of what it was last year.

For cars, this year’s festive season is a no profit-no loss season. Most Gujarat car dealers maintain that "all brands are almost at par". HML, for instance, maintains that its sales figures for the first nine months for both Santro and Accent have been around 1,600-1,700 cars across Gujarat, which is almost the same as last year.

Delivery of cars in Gujarat is the maximum on Dussehra, another auspicious day. Most car dealers in Ahmedabad claim that the figure of 10-15 cars on this day remained the same as last year, with no perceptible decline in the number of people buying cars during the festive season.

Where Gujarat is feeling the crunch, is in the white goods sector, which has witnessed a significant slowdown. Even sales gimmicks such as freebies are not proving attractive enough to set sales
spinning.

Another perceptible sign of the slowdown in this sector in Gujarat is that garba organisers found it extremely difficult to find white goods companies to sponsor their events this year, unlike earlier years, when these companies would queue up with sponsorships.

In fact, keeping this in mind, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Gujarat organised a four-day exhibition of consumer durables and non-durables in a bid to boost the sluggish sales. Called Consumex 2001, the exhibition organisers pinned their hopes on the fact that with the consumption levels of white goods in Gujarat being estimated at around 14 per cent of the national levels.

Gujarat is one of the biggest markets for any company. But the exhibition, which was on October 26-29, received a very moderate response. No reason for celebrating here!