Fashion retailers have approached for Government support to overcome the COVID-19 crisis. The retailers have asked for ease in fund flow and compensation of essential expenses like vendor payments, rents and salaries as a lot of them are finding it hard to cope up with the challenges – not to mention that millions of jobs are at risk.

The closure of stores due to nation-wide lockdown has created a huge financial crisis for the retailers. Many of the industry leaders have raised their concern over the situation asking support from the Government.

“With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the entire retail industry is witnessing uncertain and challenging times more than ever. Getting back on track will be a long and arduous journey as the way forward looks fluid with millions of jobs at risk,” said Sundeep Chugh, Managing Director and CEO, Benetton India.

He further expressed that the Government support will help the sector survive and save millions of citizens from being unemployed.

The current crisis has led to a loss of about US $ 30 billion in the retail industry and is expected to fall further.

The industry might take almost 6 months to fill in the emerging gaps when situation settles. However, the leaders have raised concern on how many companies would actually be able to survive for these 6 months.

Furthermore, a report by IIFL Securities mentioned that the lockdown would lead the apparel industry to moderate launches and sell their products at heavy discounts in order to clear their old inventory.

The report further claims that the smaller peers would be resulting in giving higher discounts so as to liquidate the inventory during the recover. While the larger players would have to prepare themselves for the next season launch to gain the advantage from potential demand recover.