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With one day left to Christmas day, the central business district is still a hive of activity.

Most of the shoppers are shopping mainly for food stuffs like sugar, bread, rice, spaghetti, cakes, chicken, cooking oil, and spices, among others and sellers are staying put for the last minute cash.

The streets that the New Vision visited this afternoon, are all crowded with customers who are buying these foodstuffs and other items like shoes, ladies’ handbags and clothes, from the various vendors who have poured their merchandise on city streets like, Namirembe road, Luwum street, Nakivubo Mews, Ben Kiwanuka Street, Ssebaana road (along Nakivubo channel), William Street, among others, without any interruption from Kampala Capital City Authority.

Arcades traders are also selling clothes for the young and old, accessories such as bags and gifts.

Ismail Byekwaso, the manager of Senana Supermarket, observed that most of the customers are buying food, stuff and clothes, since they want to eat delicious meals on Christmas day and also, look smart at worshiping places and other recreational areas during this festive period.

“We have started receiving a bigger number of customers compared to the ones we have been receiving in the past 3 days during this year’s festive season. And many of them are shopping mainly for foodstuffs, Christmas gifts like hampers, as well clothes,” said Byekwaso, while showing some of the hampers that are being bought on a large scale from the supermarket.

Food prices

Although, there is a general perception that the prices of most of the food stuffs have gone high during this period, the survey that has been conducted by the New Vision shows that there is both low- and high-price goods on the market.

Christmas shopping.

Although some food stuffs like bananas (commonly known as matooke on the local market), chicken, tomatoes, eggs, Irish potatoes, spaghetti among others, there are others whose price is still low. For example, the price of Nambaale and yellow beans dropped to between sh3,000 and sh3,400 from 3,500 to 3,800, at the beginning of this month (December).

According to Harriet Namusisi, one of the bean traders from St. Balikuddembe market, attributes this to low demand since most of the people are rushing to buy meaty products like chicken, that are a delicacy during this festive season.

Other items, whose prices has gone down are; groundnuts (which is being sold between sh6,000 to sh6,500 from an average of 7,500 at the beginning of the month), onions, whose prices has now dropped to an average of sh4,000 per kilogram from 5,000 previously, due to the new harvesting season that is ongoing in most onion producing regions like Kigezi area, according to Ali Ssemakula,a produce vendor from Nakasero market.

Simsim and rice prices are still low, compared to the previous months, because of a number of reasons ranging from bumper harvest, relative demand and trade order related issues.