Ice a hot commodity now

Ice a hot commodity now
Price doubles with the rise in temperature
Archit Watts
Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 13
With the sudden increase in temperature and unscheduled power cuts, the price of ice slabs has shot up considerably during the past one week.

An ice slab, which was earlier available for Rs 240, is currently being sold for Rs 350 in the wholesale market.

With this sudden increase in prices, where the consumers are at the receiving end, the ice manufacturers have been blaming the state government for not providing them adequate power supply to meet the gap between demand and supply.

“The temperature is hovering around 40 degree Celsius and there is a huge demand of ice. The ongoing marriage season has also led to manifold increase in the demand. However, erratic power supply is hampering the production, which has resulted into rise in price,” said Bobby Kumar, an ice manufacturer of Narwal.

He added, “Due to intense heat wave, a large portion of the ice slabs melts during transportation, which is also a reason behind the price rise”.

He said the season lasted for a very short period. “As soon as the rainy season starts, the demand of ice drops. So, this is the best time to earn money, but poor power supply is playing the spoilsport as we are running into losses,” added Bobby.

A restaurant owner said the demand of ice had almost doubled, but the supply was much less, so the ice manufacturers were charging hefty price.

“The local administration should immediately look into the matter, otherwise the common man would not be able to purchase ice in the coming days,” said Rakesh Kumar of Sharma Restaurant at Gole Market here.

However, officials of the local administration said they were regularly keeping a check on the prices of such commodities. “The price of ice has gone up just because of the increase in temperature and it will be come down soon,” said an official.