DOHA: Most of the malls, shopping centres and stationery shops have started offering back-to-school promotions because the schools will reopen within few weeks for the academic year 2024-25.

Residents have started visiting stationery shops and hypermarkets, which are running back-to-school promotions to sell school bags and stationery items such as notebooks, pencils, erasers and sharpeners for their children.

The Peninsula spoke to a number of parents to take their opinions about the back-to-school offers in local markets.

According to the parents, shopping centres and malls are offering back-to-school items in large quantities. Some of them said that their prices are higher this year compared to the last year’s prices.

“Back-to-school items like bags and stationery available here are of good quality, but I see a significant increase in their prices this year compared to the last year,” Shifa Ryad, a mother of four kids said.

She said that increasing prices of stationery items, put extra burden on parents, specially those who have more kids.

Joseline, a mother of two kids, said that the prices of the supplies this year and the last year remain almost the same.

Ateeq Ahmed, a father of four kids, said that the prices of the school supplies have not changed this year.

Shopkeepers said that there is good demand for school supplies and they expect in the coming weeks there will be increased demand and more buyers.

“The demand for the supplies has increased since the beginning of this week as most of our sales during this period were of bags, notebooks and pens,” said Abu Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Al Matar.

He said that the demand for schools supplies will surge in coming days because schools will reopen within three weeks.

“We ordered fresh stocks of school supplies like bags, pencil cases, lunch boxes, back-packs, and sports bottles for students of all grades in large quantity,” said Abu Ahmad.