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Demonetisation cast a shadow over the India International Trade Fair with footfalls slow to pick up and sales muted on Saturday, the first day the fair was open to the public.
Announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, the move to demonetise currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 marked its eleventh day on Saturday with queues outside banks and ATMs showing slow signs of reducing.
However, the number of people visiting the fair was greater than had been expected, an official from India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) said. “Footfalls have been slowly growing and until early evening they were greater than had been hoped for. Sales are yet to take off,” he added.
The commerce ministry had earlier announced efforts to allow cashless transactions and pull in more crowds to the 36th edition of the annual exhibition. These included substantially increasing the number of ATMs on site, providing more swipe machines to ticket counters and tying up with digital wallet companies like Paytm and Freecharge to allow cashless transactions.
However, most sellers said they were yet to receive the machines and had to turn back customers. The shops that had received them complained of the units not being activated till late evening.
“There is a lot of anger over the lack of facilities that had been promised to sellers,” said Shweta Kapoor from Manvi Impex.
The machines are being provided through a tie-up with the State Bank of India and Axis Bank, which also have stalls on the fairground with the facility for opening accounts.
Sellers from other nations, who are not eligible for receiving swipe machines, accepted old currency notes. “We have to try and exchange them later, otherwise most people don’t have enough cash,” said Sariful Islam, a Bangladeshi garment retailer. A Chinese retailer said they had been warned by officials not to accept the old currency notes.
More than a few visitors said they planned to come back over the next few days with old notes. “It is difficult to head to the bank every day to exchange cash, we will come ready with the old notes next time,” said the Singh family from Dwarka.
The limit for swapping notes at bank branches was reduced from Rs 4,500 to Rs 2,000 per person on Friday.
Visitors said while the 18-odd ATMs were working, cash had run out within an hour. Officials, however, said it was difficult to keep the machines running in the crowded fairground. The price of tickets for general visitors has been kept low at Rs 60 on weekdays for adults and Rs 120 on weekends. The tickets can be bought online.
Based on the theme of Digital India, the fair started with 7,000 participants in an exhibition area of more than 100,000 square metres. This year, the partner country is South Korea and the country in focus Belarus.
The fair saw four days of business-to-business interactions and events from November 14. During this period, business tickets cost Rs 500, which kept away smaller traders, another official said.
Apart from exhibition stalls set up by various ministries, those by the state governments of Gujarat, Bihar, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh were major crowd pullers.
READ OUR FULL COVERAGE ON THE MODI GOVT'S DEMONETISATION MOVE
