Kerala - Alappuzha   

Shopping fete strikes it rich in Alappuzha

ALAPPUZHA: With the much-talked about Grand Kerala Shopping Festival coming to an end on Tuesday, authorities here are claiming a huge success with commercial transactions worth Rs.65 crore being projected from Alappuzha alone.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, District Collector V.K. Balakrishnan and District Industries Centre general manager A.J. Abdul Latheef said the festival from December 1 to January 15 had 118 trade centres participating. More than 80,000 gift coupons were presented to customers.

“The total transactions in the shops that were part of the festival during these 45 days were worth Rs. 65 crore,” Mr. Balakrishnan said. The process of ‘showering’ gifts on customers was yet to be over with the South Zone lucky draw to be held on the Alappuzha beach on January 18. The mega draw would be held at Thiruvananthapuram on January 22, he said.

So far, 64 Santro cars and 64 Sony Plasma television sets were among the gifts presented to customers who had made purchases above Rs.1,000.

This was apart from the thousands of smaller gift items won through the scratch-and-win coupons and weekly lucky draws, he said.

Admitting that the participation of trade centres was on a much lesser scale than expected, Mr. Balakrishnan said the authorities had expected at least 2,000 shops to register for the festival. “But it seems there was some confusion about the event among the traders and only 118 shops were part of the festival in the district. But I have to say that the publicity campaign did not fall short on any count. It was purely because of some misunderstanding that many kept away. By the time they realised that it was a profitable event, it was too late. We are sure that next year’s event will be a much bigger success,” he said.

Mr. Latheef said Friday’s zonal lucky draw would be conducted by Alappuzha MP K.S. Manoj. The meeting would be inaugurated by K.C. Venugopal, MLA, while C.S. Sujatha, MP, would speak on the occasion.

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