Incessant rainfall in Chennai, which has virtually broken the 100-year record, is affecting textile trade in the city as most of the factories are closed and not sure when will it get back to start regular production. Though Chennai is a big automobile manufacturing and IT hub, it also has more than 500 apparel, leather garment export houses, buying houses and big firms related to textile business. Some of the good export houses in present Chennai are A. I. Enterprises, Meridian Apparels, R. K. Industries, Magnum Clothing, StanFab Apparels, Vijay Enterprises, P. S. Apparels (India) and their collective turnover is about Rs. 800 crore per year.
Surat – India’s largest man-made-fabric (MMF) textile industry has estimated that Rs. 300 crore worth of orders have been cancelled by buyers in Chennai in the past fortnight because of the heavy rainfall and due to this, supply of textile products to the city has also come down to 80 per cent in the last few days. Out of Rs. 110 crore worth of daily supply of saris, home textiles and dress materials from Surat, textile products to the tune of Rs. 30 crore are despatched to markets in southern India. It is expected that it may take at least three months for normalcy to return there. The losses to the textile units may run into hundreds of crores of rupees.
Moreover, traders supply textiles to markets in south India on credit basis and their payments have got stuck because of flood in the city, disturbing the turnover chain. In the last month of the year, North India has less demand so Surat depends more on Southern part of the country but due to the natural calamity there is no demand from South India also. According to The Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (Assocham), “The financial loss due to record-breaking rainfall in Chennai and several parts of Tamil Nadu may even exceed Rs. 15,000 crore-mark as Chennai has come to a virtual standstill and is in the grip of fear and panic.”
