An apple a day? Think again

HYDERABAD: An apple a day keeps the doctor away. But current prices it seems are keeping the consumers at bay. A Shimla/Fuji apple now costs Rs 25, which some vendors claim is unprecedented in the twin cities. They say so not without a good reason. Apple sales and logically, consumption have come down by 50 per cent due to a number of factors like inflation, poor harvest and also the ongoing Telangana agitation.Roadside vendors to supermarkets in the malls have witnessed a dip in apple sales in the last one month. “Food Bazar used to sell a minimum of 50 kgs of apples per day but now we are selling a  maximum of 20 kgs. Customers are not buying apples because the prices have suddenly gone up,” explains K Aruna, store operations supervisor, Food Bazar, Ameerpet. This being off season, the prices are generally high and added to that supply-side bottlenecks have further pushed the prices. In August 2010, Gaddi Annaram fruit market imported 3. 5 lakh boxes of apples but this year, it received only 2.5 lakh boxes due to two reasons. Firstly, rains had lashed almost two-thirds of Himachal Pradesh’s Shimla apple belt in the last season. Secondly, the Telangana Sakala Janula Samme hit transport services hard. “These two factors contributed in no small measure to the rise in prices and consequent sales dip,” says selection-grade secretary of the Gaddi Annaram Agricultural Market Committee V Seetharam Reddy. MD Hasan, a fruit vendor at the Moazam Jahi market who has been selling fruits for the past 10 years, exclaims, “Apples have never been this expensive!” He offers a different reason for the same. “It’s due to the growing demand and falling supply. Wholesale dealers have started storing apples in large quantities to sell them later. The demand is more and the supply less and as a consequence, prices are rising. These dealers want to ensure that prices remain high even during the apple season,” he reasons.