Sunday cloth market helps small-scale business owners earn living in Bhutan’s Tsirang

Thimphu [Bhutan], March 29 (ANI): Small-scale business owners in Bhutan’s Tsirang district have benefitted economically from the Sunday cloth market as it helps them earn a decent living.

Almost 40 cloth vendors set up shop every Sunday in the retail area, which is directly above the Damphu Sunday Vegetable Market, Bhutan Live reported.
The location where the clothes are sold on Sunday is the buildings that were built a few years ago by the Tsirang District Administration to improve the standard of living for the district’s low-income families.

Bhutan Live reported that one of the traders is 40-year-old Choden from Tsholingkhar Gewog. Since 2015, she has been able to support herself with it. After her husband passed away in 2014, the arrangement assisted the mother of two in raising her two daughters as well as her younger sister.

“I keep on saving the little income I get from this business for my children’s school expenditures. My elder daughter has completed class twelve. But I still have my younger daughter and my younger sister studying in class twelve. I have to continue to depend on this business to provide education for them,” Bhutan Live quoted Choden, a cloth vendor as saying.

She added that the business is very crucial for her kids and that it is difficult to meet routine expenses without any other income source.

Their main clients are the vegetable vendors and shoppers that frequent the Sunday Vegetable Market. When things go smoothly, the merchants claim they can make about 30,000 Bhutanese Ngultrum per day, according to Bhutan Live.

Yet, the cloth vendors claim that having a separate store or a lock system for their booths will help them maximise their profits and will allow them to operate at least three days a week.