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Mony K. Mathew

Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 27

The second edition of Grand Kerala Shopping Festival, which opens on December 1, and is scheduled to last for 45 days, has attracted a good response from retailers covering all major sectors.

The pace of registration over the last few days for being part of the festival indicates that the number of festival shops will exceed 3,000 as against around 2,200 shops that participated in 2007-08 when the annual event was launched, according to officials at the Festival Directorate.

In step with the growing enthusiasm for the festival, the Government has announced prizes worth Rs 20 crore this year, up from Rs 15 crore last year.

The officials said that foreigners constituted the largest number of visitors to the official Web site of the shopping festival and most of the enquiries were about the State’s traditional products, followed by handloom and jewellery.

A good number of enquires are also coming from the other States in the country.

The shopping festival is part of the Government’s efforts to highlight Kerala’s excellence as one of the foremost holiday destinations in the world and is thus held to coincide with the State’s tourism season.

Also, a large number of non-resident Keralites visit their homes during this period.

The participants in the festival include jewellery, electronics, textiles and consumer durable shops; hotels, restaurants, cottages and resorts; and shopping malls, health clubs, Auyrveda care centres and automobiles shops.

The registration is done under three categories, namely, Gold Partner (registration fee Rs 25,000), Silver Partner (Rs 5,000) and General Category (Rs 1,000).

The officials said that the areas of interest to foreigners ranged from availability of traditional Aranmula mirror, villages where handloom products are sold, details of spices markets, major tourism destinations and resorts and the quality of gold ornaments.

Last year, Thrissur topped in total sales and fittingly enough, this year’s festival is being inaugurated there. The maximum sales turnover by an individual shop was also recorded in Thrissur.

As for the Government, the additional VAT collection during the festival period amounted to over Rs 200 crore last year. The tax collection in December 2007 was Rs 90 crore more than that in December 2006, while it was Rs 103.23 crore more in January 2008 than that in January 2007.

More Stories on : Events | Retailing | Kerala

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