Local Date Festival at the Souq Waqif. (Picture by: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula)
After successfully receiving over 38,000 visitors and selling more than 130 tonnes of local fresh dates, the ‘4th Local Dates Festival 2019’ will conclude its activities today at Souq Waqif.
The 12-day festival, which began on July 23, is being organised by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment with the participation of 85 local farms.
Yesterday, the festival witnessed a big turnout as residents thronged the venue to buy fresh dates before festival ends. On the tenth day (Thursday), 4,700 people visited the festival and 13 tonnes of locally produced fresh dates were sold. On average, per day sales of dates remained around 10 to 12 tonnes.
Several exhibitors participating in the festival expressed their great satisfaction with this year's edition, where the turnout was great particularly after 8pm due to fall of mercury.
Talking to The Peninsula, the vendors pointed out that they succeeded in selling the whole stock they would bring on daily basis from the farms. They noted that the festival had offered them a platform to market their dates and it would encourage them to increase produce.
“The footfall of customers is good in this edition compared to the previous editions and my average daily sale is about 100kg which I think is satisfactory. We usually sold all the quantities that we brought from the farm. The prices are also reasonable for all customers starting from QR7 to QR18," said an exhibitor, Nour Khan, from Rashed Farm.
Regarding farm production, he said it also witnessed big growth in recent years thanks to the efforts of the farmers and help from the Ministry of Municipality and the Environment which is providing seedlings.
Another exhibitor, Dajamber, said: “The sales were encouraging throughout the festival and an average sale from our stall is between 150kg to 200kg per day but there are some exhibitors who sell much more, maybe up to 500kg a day.”
Haji Fateh from Abdul Hamid Al Ansari Farm said: “The turnout is excellent this year and the production of farms has also increased significantly. The most popular fresh dates which witnessed more demand are Khalas, Al Shishi, Al Barhi and our daily sales reach 200kg to 300kg per day.”
The 12-day dates festival is part of a major programme of the Ministry of Municipality and Environment to provide platforms to local farms to market their produce so they could get appropriate return for their investments and hard work.The Ministry is working on a project to increase the number of palm trees in the country by providing best quality saplings of palm trees to farmers.
