CHENNAI: Arrivals of vegetables at the Thirumazhisai temporary wholesale market will go down from Friday as the city and suburbs will come under an intense lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Residents in some pockets of the core city area rushed to neighbourhood markets to buy vegetables on Thursday, a day ahead of the 12-day long down would commence. It also had an impact in increasing prices of some vegetables such as tomato.
The temporary market will receive anywhere between 100 to 150 trucks carrying more than 1,000tonnes of veggies from Friday, which is a significant drop by about 50%.
Thirumazhisai gets an average of 200 vehicles ferrying 2,000 tonnes of vegetables. The number of vehicles has been reduced as the wholesale traders anticipate that the retail traders from the city visiting Thirumazhisai would decrease due to the lockdown. After the wholesale vegetable market was shifted to Thirumazhisai, the facility caters only for retail traders in Chennai and suburbs. However, it used to attract retail traders from Tindivanam in Villupuram district to Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh when it was functioning at Koyambedu.
The temporary market will also remain shut for two Sunday this month, in view of the complete lockdown in Chennai and its fringes in neighbouring districts, S Chandran, secretary of Federation of Wholesale Vegetable Market Associations said.
Meanwhile, areas such as K K Nagar had more customers engaging in panic buying on Thursday. While this resulted in shops running out of stock. Veggies were sold at higher rate due to the spike in demand.
Vasanth, a retail vegetable trader at K K Nagar, said shops had brisk business and the commodity was sold out quickly due to panic buying. “We had to inform our customers that retail vegetable shops will operate as usual on Friday,” he said, adding that the rate of tomato jumped by 5 to 10 per kg. “The same quantity of tomato was sold at 20, ten days ago. On Thursday, it was marketed at 30 to 35,” he added.
Residents in some pockets of the core city area rushed to neighbourhood markets to buy vegetables on Thursday, a day ahead of the 12-day long down would commence. It also had an impact in increasing prices of some vegetables such as tomato.
The temporary market will receive anywhere between 100 to 150 trucks carrying more than 1,000tonnes of veggies from Friday, which is a significant drop by about 50%.
Thirumazhisai gets an average of 200 vehicles ferrying 2,000 tonnes of vegetables. The number of vehicles has been reduced as the wholesale traders anticipate that the retail traders from the city visiting Thirumazhisai would decrease due to the lockdown. After the wholesale vegetable market was shifted to Thirumazhisai, the facility caters only for retail traders in Chennai and suburbs. However, it used to attract retail traders from Tindivanam in Villupuram district to Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh when it was functioning at Koyambedu.
The temporary market will also remain shut for two Sunday this month, in view of the complete lockdown in Chennai and its fringes in neighbouring districts, S Chandran, secretary of Federation of Wholesale Vegetable Market Associations said.
Meanwhile, areas such as K K Nagar had more customers engaging in panic buying on Thursday. While this resulted in shops running out of stock. Veggies were sold at higher rate due to the spike in demand.
Vasanth, a retail vegetable trader at K K Nagar, said shops had brisk business and the commodity was sold out quickly due to panic buying. “We had to inform our customers that retail vegetable shops will operate as usual on Friday,” he said, adding that the rate of tomato jumped by 5 to 10 per kg. “The same quantity of tomato was sold at 20, ten days ago. On Thursday, it was marketed at 30 to 35,” he added.
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