Garment exporters have urged Government for immediate support as their survival is now on stake owing to fast spread of COVID-19.
Shiv Bhargava CEO, Viraj Exports, who is also heading Exporters Grievances Association, Noida wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and requested for more and immediate support.
“COVID-19 is the last nail on the coffin of apparel export trade. Buyers have either cancelled all orders or put them on hold. With no liquidity rotation, survival is impossible. Millions of jobs are lost already and the rest of the jobs are at stake. To save the situation from going out of hand, some temporary hard decisions need to be taken immediately,” he mentioned in the letter.
He requested to PM that credit period of post-shipment bills should be extended to 360 days instead of 180 days at present and allow interest rebate /subvention for further 2 per cent minimum for pre-shipment and post-shipment finance on all loans taken by the exporters.
The Government should help with a package for those exporters whose payments are held up for more than 30 days by importers in Coronavirus-infected countries.
Shiv added that such measures are temporary but will save millions of jobs. He also suggested that all apparel exporters should write together and individually to the PM.
Talking to Apparel Resources Shiv said, “Nobody knows when one will open the factories? What will one produce as buyers themselves are not sure when they want the goods. The bigger the buyers/suppliers, the bigger the problem. One cannot imagine the losses that are anticipated in apparel export trade.”
