Demonetisation severely affects Christmas cake sales in city

People involved in the bakery industry round-the-year had the worst Christmas Day ever this time with most small and medium scale bakeries in the state failing to clear the stock of cakes they had prepared for the day.

The stock did not clear as the demand for cakes has gone down due to the cash crunch due to the Centre’s hasty decision of demonetisation.

There are several small and medium scale bakeries across the state which expects a good turnover during Christmas. According to the owners, they had prepared much lesser number of cakes this time knowing that the demand would not be like all the previous years due to demonetisation.

Despite of taking steps, they are in deep trouble at present, with stock yet to get cleared even in the evening of Christmas day.

Sheikh Muftijuddin, owner of a bakery, said: “There was no increase in the rate of cakes sold by us compared to that of the last time. The decision not to increase the price was taken considering that the sale may drop further and at the same time, lesser quantity of cakes was produced. The shopkeepers were not ready to take the risk of procuring the number of cakes that they had taken last year. The reason being they were apprehending loss in case they fail to sell out the same.

“As a result, I am yet to clear the stock. Since they go bad pretty fast, we cannot stock it for long. Finally, we have to clear the stock at the half of its actual price by incurring a heavy loss.”

In some places there were banners announcing “buy one cake get one free” from Saturday onwards in order to sell out the stock.

Manoj Patanaik, who supplies bakery items round the year in local shops, said that like all other years, he had started supplying cakes, but only a handful number of shopkeepers were ready to take them.

Most had around ten to 12 packets containing one pound cake just two to three days ahead of the 

Christmas while last year each of the shopkeepers had taken 20 packets.

The bakery owners are now trying to find a way out to clear their debts as they had taken raw materials on credit.