Peanuts - poor man's dry fruit.

Byline: Sher Alam Shinwari

PESHAWAR -- with the start of cold season dry fruit markets get abuzz with costumers but the once booming trend is now fast dwindling due to exorbitant prices.

The cold weather across the country raises the rate of dry fruits manifold and poor people at the most remain unable to enjoy it and some of them have become a far-fetched thing but peanuts still attract large number of people.

Like previous years, this winter too witnessed sky rocking prices of dry fruits in Peshawar but peanuts still hit dry fruit stalls because of its low rate. There are several dry fruit markets and stores in Peshawar but buyers seem to be a few, however, buyers flock to the peanuts stalls.

Saamal Khan, a dry fruit merchant in Namak Mandi, told this scribe that traders invested no big amount in the dry fruits due to deep slump in its market and also buyers of dry fruits got decreased despite cold weather.

He said that only few items had an encouraging sale including peanuts but most dry fruit store keepers did not showcase it as it did not fetch enough earning while occupied much space.

Grown in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, peanuts have a good market and especially cold weather is ideal for consumption of such low priced dry fruit. Chota Lahor is a market, which supplies peanuts to other cities including provincial metropolis. Even low income people show up at peanuts stalls in and around Peshawar for it.

Rahimdad, another dealer of dry fruits, told this scribe that most traders imported dry fruits including almonds, pistachios...