Demand for consumer goods down in Basra

BASRA / IraqiNews.com: A number of traders and store owners said that the summer season witnessed a decrease in citizens’ demand for consumer goods in Basra compared to recent years. “The summer season was the lowest seasons in sales operations despite the plentitude of goods and with acceptable prices,” a wholesaler in al-Ushar market in Basra told Iraqi News. “The demand percentage is lower this year by 30 percent when compared to recent years. This percentage may be higher or lower for some other wholesalers in Basra ,” Taher Yaaqoub said. “We import food products to sell them to stores and market-vendors, but demand began to gradually decrease due to the drop in sales,” he continued. “During the past years, we used to sell between 2.5-3 million Iraqi dinars worth of consumer goods, but our sales decreased to 2 million Iraqis dinars,” he said, noting that sales during Ramadan increased but never reached the percentage of past years. For his part, Salam Khalaf, an owner of a clothing store, said “ citizens became less interested in buying despite low prices and we do not know why.” “Several traders suffer from this situation which affects our work,” he added. “The decrease in citizens’ demand may be attributed to the absence of good goods with reasonable prices as most of the goods were imported from China , Turkey and Syria ,” he highlighted. “High prices bother us and most of the goods in the markets are neither good nor original, and traders sell them for high prices,” Souaad Karim, an engineer, told Iraqi News. “ Most of the families lacked goods in their houses during the years after the topple of the former regime so we were buying everything new in the markets, but we have reached the level of fulfillment,” she said. “Most of the consumer goods in the markets are bad and there is no competition between traders or companies to provide citizens with the best services,” she said. “The global economic crisis has had a negative effect. It should have affected the market positively, mainly in terms of consumer goods, but instead the opposite happened,” Dr. Abdulreda Farag al-Badrawi, economy professor at Basra University , said. “We need to increase economic activity as we are an agricultural country. There are economic projects that could activate the economy,” he noted. SH (S)/SR 1