GUANGZHOU: While vegetable prices are soaring on the southern mainland as reported yesterday, local retailers of beverages and air-conditioners are lowering their prices as sales nosedived over the past two weeks amid continuous rain.

"We have organized various sales promotion activities to attract customers," Zhu Yufeng, a beverage salesperson at TrustMart Store said yesterday.

Purified water, soft drinks, beer and tea at the store have been priced much lower, according to Zhu. "There is even a five to eight percent discount for bulk buying," he said.

Normally, this is the time of the year to mark up beverage prices as summer approaches.

"But the weather has been cool these days, just like springtime," said Luo Tan, director of the Guangdong Bottled Beverage Industry Association.

Sources with the Guangdong provincial weather bureau said that the average temperature in Guangdong over the past two weeks was around 25 degree Celsius amid the continuous downpours.

"Sales of beverages depend a lot on the weather. As a result, the low temperatures, coupled with the rain, have hit the industry hard," said Luo.

Meanwhile, producers and retailers of air conditioners have also seen their share of business loss.

Sources with Sunning Corporation, a major home appliance retailer based in Guangzhou, said yesterday that revenue from the sales of air-conditioners in the second quarter has dropped by almost 30 percent compared to the same period last year.

"The drop in sales revenue, which was mainly due to the rainy days, was out of our expectation" said Xu Yong, the company's assistant general manager.

According to Xu, many air-conditioner manufacturers, including Media, Gree and Haier, have started offering bigger discounts since the end of last month.

(HK Edition 06/20/2008 page1)