By 5 p.m., the usually bustling Pot Market in Hyderabad had fallen unusually silent, with only a handful of customers trickling into jewellery stores. Inside Viswanath Jewellers, salespersons sat waiting as gold prices swung wildly within hours. “Yesterday at 9 p.m., gold was ₹1.55 lakh. By 1.32 a.m., it had shot up to ₹1.74 lakh, and now it is ₹1.66 lakh. These fluctuations will put us out of business,” said Kishore, pointing to a live price-tracking app. He said a customer who booked 10 tolas the previous evening could not now be charged the revised rate at the time of delivery.
Pot Market is a jewellery trade hub with over 300 small and medium shops near the Secunderabad Monda Market packed into a one-kilometre quadrangle. While the jewellery trade is brisk on regular days, the area also acts as a way-centre for gold retail trade of districts with small and medium workshops jostling with pawn brokers who live and work out of the residential and commercial street.
“Bomb phat gaya election ke baad (a bomb has exploded after the elections). Today appears like a Sunday. We usually get 25-30 customers a day. But today there are none. The high price of gold and today’s decision to increase import duty from 6% to 15% has dealt a blow to our business,” says Parasmal Ranka, president of Telangana Pawn Brokers and Jewellers Association.
