March 30: The prices of summer clothes have gone up along with the growing demand. With the winter coming to an end and rising temperature, the demand for such garments has been increasing in the market. Likewise, the prices too have been rising.
Despite the growing fear of coronavirus, the number of customers coming to buy clothes for summer is increasing in the main business centres of Kathmandu such as Asan, Indrachowk, New Road, and Sundhara. Rakesh Sapkota, who has been involved in wholesale business of readymade garments in Asan, said that the number of traders coming to Kathmandu from outside the valley has increased.
Last year, when the summer season started, the trade of readymade garments came to a standstill as the government had imposed lockdown in Nepal to prevent the spread of coronavirus. However, Sapkota said that the textile business is expected to be good this year. According to him, the trade of summer clothes is maximum in the month of Baisakh (mid-April to mid-May). However, customers have already started flocking to buy clothes.

As demand grows, ready-made garment traders are increasing their imports from China, India, Thailand, and Indonesia. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, importers are not able to go abroad on their own to import textiles, so they have been looking at textile designs online and buying clothes through agents.
Dil Sundar Shrestha, president of the fair committee of the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI), said that the rise in the price of dollar and the price of containers has affected the price of clothes. According to him, the price of a T-shirt that used to be Rs 700 has now gone up to Rs 1,000.
Nepali traders import readymade garments worth Rs 4 billion for summer every year. According to traders, about 40 percent of the garments are imported from India, 20 percent from China, and the remaining 40 percent from other countries. Due to the lockdown and restriction on movement, the import of readymade garments from abroad had declined. However, now that foreign textiles are being imported again, the market for Nepali products is said to be declining.