With barely some few days to the celebration of Christmas, the Eastern Regional capital, Koforidua, has virtually become a cemetery, as the usual euphoria which characterises the yuletide is clearly missing.
The usual hustle and bustle during the Mondays and Thursday market days of the town can hardly be seen.
This was uncovered during a tour by the Eastern File to find out how business was doing ahead of the yuletide, but negative and sad emotions expressed by traders in the municipality greeted the file.
Speaking to the file, traders and prospective buyers attributed the situation to economic hardships, which of late has shown its bad and unacceptable face to Ghanaians.
According to the traders, it beats their mind's eye that business was not booming as compared to previous celebrations.
They noted that the perception that traders make brisk business during festivities was now thing of the past, due to the growing economic hardships.
On the part of few prospective buyers who granted interviews to the file, despite the fact that they needed some items to make the celebrations, they could not buy them, because of the economic situation of the country.
Whilst some of the customers insisted that in order to be tempted into impulse buying they did not want to come to the market, others only come to the market to do window shopping.