Current effects of COVID-19 are being seen in various developed and developing nation over administrative as well as executive level. Different coalition groups across India have initiated campaigns that aim at helping workers on daily wages and help decision-makers manage funds and time in focusing labour to change conditions. Employee leaves without repercussions have led to some fiscal liquidity in the market but are managed by government-aided projects designed to help the most significant employment generating sector. The Clean Clothes Campaign is one such initiative that is convincing brands to ensure that workers suffering from Coronavirus be allowed to take paid leaves during their period of self-isolation.
Worldwide Inspirations To Indian Retail Companies
Clean Clothes Campaign, which is currently running in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Albania, Central America, and Sri Lanka is making efforts through online crowd mobilization towards better working policies. The Director of Worker Rights Consortium- Scott Nova has remarked that the lack of ‘poverty wages’ along with unsafe and unhygienic places keep the garment industry across the globe a suitable victim of infections such as COVID 19.
He further remarks, “The fashion industry has evolved in a way that makes it hard in normal times for the people who make the clothes we all wear every day to survive on the poverty wages they are paid.” Further, non-essential goods such as clothes and jewellery have suffered a massive hit to Indian retailers causing widespread job loss. According to the chief executive, RAI (Retailers Association of India), approximately 40% of the six million employees who hold jobs at the Indian modern retail market are expected to lose their portfolios in the coming four months.
Indian Policy Reaction To The Current COVID-19
Overall, there has been a significant impact on CDIT (consumer electronics, durables, IT, and telephones), also being referred to as durable goods. India’s neighbouring regions, such as Cambodia and Myanmar, are gearing up to include local media and businesses to perform CSR activities with the perks of regaining the socio-economic situation. Extensive advertising and social media have changed. This quick metamorphosis has altered the prices of raw materials, freight, labour, as well as the operational costs.
Understanding that the global economy is on a slowdown, experts across India and abroad are concluding to devise future strategies that favour nationalistic textile policies. Having a sustainable and nationally closed economic web is forecast to reduce future threats and fluctuations. One such Indian company spearheading the domestic textile scenario is Sowtex. This B2B giant is one of the very few to offer distinguished tech aggregator services to buyers and sellers for over 5000 business players in India and South Asia. In these current times of distress, it is also the sole provider of an online platform that provides IoT tools that catalyze discussion and dialogue based on sales, digital sourcing, stock liquidation, and capacity management out of many more.
Dominant fashion and garment retailers have faced store closures that have hit their sales and profit margins by double digits. Privately and publically owned retailers have been resorting to RBI intervention for the creation of market-oriented policies. As a result, in recent news, the Reserve Bank of India, in its latest statement, has agreed to reduce the national ‘repo rate’ while carefully maintaining the established ‘reverse repo rate’ in hopes of punching more money in the textile economy of the nation. The macroeconomic policies will make sure that the RBI doesn’t hoard cash, commercial banks get encouraged to take more loans, and borrowers further take more loans from the banks. A relaxed period of loan retrieval is expected to help Indian textile retailers sail through the current economic slowdown as well as pay their staff.
Effects Of A Lockdown Extension
Fearing a lockdown till June this year, 30% of the retail stores are expected to close, leading to close to 18 lakh people losing their employment. The RAI confirmed that it has written to the Indian administration for the issuance of a relief package for the textile retail industry, similar to the government of Singapore, UK, and the USA. Managing Director of the Rs 1,000 crore luxury brand House of Anita Dongre, Kavi Mishra, remarks that other than paying salaries to its employees, the company has also indulged in a Rs 1.5 crore fund aiming to support its vendors. The sole challenge remains that if the lockdown exceeds the month of April, then many small-scale companies might come at the brink of closure and an apparent drop in the EoDB (Ease of Doing Business) score.
The current loss of 64 million dollars to the Indian textile industry, with an additional loss of 13 million dollars to the leather industry, is forecast to reach a plateau anytime now. Recovery schemes aimed to maintain the goodwill and hope in B2B as well as B2C sectors has become the top priority of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI). According to FICCI, other than a direct impact of the overall demand-supply graph, there is a general failure in maintaining standardized cash flow in the textile market because of which innovative, nationalistic, and futuristic policies are expected to become operational.