Corona Virus outbreak in China has started casting its dark shadow over sectors beyond the boundary of health domain. Low cost non branded garment trade in Bengal rural level is a major victim.
“As an immediate impact, retail level price has started shooting up with rapidly depleting inventory here. Even worse is uncertain long term impact in the supply side in China. We are highly worried as the trade has almost completely become dependent on them,” said Bijoy Saha, a wholesaler in Siliguri dealing with Chinese kid’s ware, caps, belts etc. Saha is one of around 25 main wholesalers in this small town in Darjeeling foothills in West Bengal. The second trade hub in state for these low cost items after Kolkata.
According to market insiders, to cater to near 1.5 crore rural people from 5 industrially backward districts around Siliguri, these wholesalers annually import items worth around Rs 250 crore. “Rest of Bengal is served by over 2000 wholesalers from Kolkata with much higher average import volume,” said Bimal Mandal, a trader in Siliguri market.
Without any concrete database, size of the trade in Bengal is estimated as of over 30,000 crore per annum. Experts consider this as a great support to huge chunk of Bengal populace with lower than state’s average per capita income of around Rs 35,000.
“Usually we fly to Guangzhou in south China. Make our choice from endless alternatives and stock there. Finalize deal for two to six months and come back. The stock keeps on coming as we pay phase wise. Highly buyer friendly policy helps us to roll seamlessly with just 15 days paid inventory. But cancellation or alteration of order is difficult in these highly cost optimized deals,” said Saha. .
“Now, despite near zero stock in hand we are in limbo on paying for next consignments. But as demand for post winter items have started rising fast, Indian product suppliers have increased their price by 20%,”
Clear enough, the deep scar of Corona outbreak is going to remain here for long even after the crisis is over there.
Published On : 13-02-2020
Source : Economic Times
