Surat (Gujarat): The textile industry in Gujarat's Surat is facing a major setback owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, with estimated losses of around Rs 14,500 crore this year.
Surat houses the biggest market for textiles in India, where people from across the country come to buy goods worth crores. The city has more than 300 cloth markets, wherein more than 65,000 traders deal from their shops. In addition, the city also has 350 processing houses.
However, at the moment, the Surat textile industry is in bad shape as the coronavirus pandemic has ruined business. Out of the total 65,000 cloth shops in the city, only about 25 per cent are presently functioning.
Surat's textile industry, including related activities, provides employment to about 15 lakh people, four lakh of whom are engaged in the cloth markets for cutting, packing, folding, loading and unloading.
In fact, the industry was facing difficulty even before pandemic, as the implementation of the GST had badly affected the informal activities. Traders believe the industry had gradually started declining due to GST, and when the pandemic struck, the textile industry came to a grinding halt.
Most of the workers in the Surat textile industry hail from states likes Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Speaking to ETV Bharat, the president of the Textile Association, Rangnath Sharada said: "During the lockdown phase in March and April, we lost the wedding season business and important festivals such as Ramzan, Baisakhi and AkhaTreej. Before GST, the industry used to produce about 4.25 crore metres of cloth daily."
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"Now the daily production has come down to 75 lac metres per day. We lost important marriage season, workers are not coming back and there is no demand in the market. The government has never helped us, so now us traders don't even expect any help from the government," he added.
During the wedding season, trade would have been around Rs 250 crore, but the lockdown forced traders to keep their stock in godowns. The total loss faced by traders is estimated to be around Rs 14,500 crore.
However, traders have now pinned their hopes on the coming Navratri and Diwali season - if they can achieve even 50 per cent sales, they would have some much-needed relief.
Mukesh Dagha has been working at the Surat textile market for the last 13 years as a market agent, and deals with about 150 traders from seven states. He used to make deals worth crores every year, but now the business has dropped.
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Speaking to ETV Bharat, Dagha said that he has hardly done any trading during these months. There are about 5,000 agents like Dagha working in the cloth markets and all are experiencing the same dire situation. Many agents are reeling under financial crisis as their payments have been stuck.
Bhairav Singh, who works at the Ashoka Tower textile market, told ETV Bharat that he used to do about business worth Rs 2.5 crore during the seasons, but this year, the lockdown foiled all his plans. He also used to sell about school uniform cloth worth Rs 25 lakh, but this year he was hardly able to sell goods worth Rs four lakh.
