The Hindu Business Line : Fireworks to cost 20-25% more this Diwali

Hyderabad, Aug. 30 Diwali might still be two months away, but expect shopping for this year’s festival of lights to burn a bigger hole in your pocket. Not just clothes and sweets, but this year fireworks prices could increase by 20 to 25 per cent at the wholesale level.

Mr J Manik Rao, General Secretary, Fireworks Dealers Association of Andhra Pradesh, told Business Line that this year the abnormal increase in fireworks prices was not just due to increase in costs of raw material but also due to an increase in workers’ wages.

“In the past the average wage per worker used to be around Rs 70 to 80 a day. But this year it has gone up to Rs 200 a day and they are also demanding incentives like pick up and drop and lunch on working days,” he said on the sidelines of a seminar organised by the Association.

According to Mr Rao, earlier the workers were at the mercy of the factory owners, but now since a lot more opportunities have come their way, they are demanding better working conditions and better return for the services offered.

“People in Sivakasi in the past, which accounts for the majority of crackers produced in the country, used to depend only on this industry. But now couple of spinning mills have come up and also the hosiery industry in the adjoining Tirupur district is providing a lot of employment with better working atmosphere which is making them move out of the cracker industry,” Mr Rao said.

He added that even the piece work rates had gone up two fold. “So taking into consideration all these factors the prices at the wholesale markets will increase between 20 and 25 per cent and at the retail level by at least 30 per cent over last year,” Mr Rao said.

Mr Rao said that the new attraction that companies had promised this Diwali was more varieties of soundless items. “This trend was started last year itself. But this season, we can surely see more varieties of crackers which just have colours but no sound when they explode,” he said.

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