Garment industry stares at losses in absence of orders

Ludhiana: Even after almost three weeks since the garment industry restarted after lockdown, it has still not been able to return back on track. Earlier, not being able to arrange labour for production, now garment manufacturers are staring at even bigger problem of getting orders.
According to businessmen, there is a huge shortage of orders as till now majority of garment stores across India have not been able to open and those who have managed to open are not seeing enough footfall of customers. As per industry estimates, till date garment manufacturers have been able to attain 30% of production as compared to last year during the same time.
Giving insight into the problems, Vinod Thapar, president of Knitwear and Textile Club, said, “After battling the problem of getting labour back to factories and arranging raw material, we now are facing bigger trouble. As markets and malls across India have not fully opened till now, there have been no sale of the existing stocks. Moreover, even if at some places the shops and stores are open, customers are not turning up for making purchases because of which entire garment industry is suffering huge losses. As we do not want to shut down our factories to check our workers from running away, we are trying to operate factories at 20-30% of their capacity. We fear that the coming months will be more troublesome for us as we are getting lukewarm response from our buyer.”
According to Harish Kairpal, finance secretary of Knitwear Club, “Factory production of micro and small garment units as of now is anywhere between 30-40% only. This is just the beginning of the tough times as garment industry is likely to see several closures in coming days and a lot of businessmen will be switching on to other things from their core business of garment manufacturing. According to our estimates, even if the markets and malls fully open, we will not be able to see the same level of demand due to several reasons. So, in order to cope up with the coming situation we have already lowered our production levels and we will calibrate it with the demand in coming months.”
Charanjiv Singh, another garment manufacturer, said, “As compared to last year we have capped our production to not more than 30%, which is an all-time low capacity. Whatever stuff is being manufactured is being stored inside our factories only as there is hardly any demand for these. Moreover, there is no response from overseas buyers and therefore it is out of question to step up our production beyond the current levels.”