Trade

Indian leather sector: exports hit by COVID-19 suffers decline

Jul 14, 2020 India

Exports of the leather sector have been severely affected so far this financial year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Aqeel Ahmed Panaruna, Chairman of the Council for Leather Exports stated

Provisional data from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics indicates that in 2019-20 exports declined by 10.89% to roughly 5.07 billion US dollars from 5.69 billion US dollars in 2018-19.

“Only about 10% of exports was achieved in March 2020 due to COVID-19. For combined April and May 2020 we achieved only 17% or 128.52 million US dollars in exports when compared to 757.11 million Us dollars in April-May 2019”, Mr. Panaruna is being cited by TheHindu.

The same source says that while exports of leather, leather products and footwear stood at 442 million US dollars in June 2019, only 35% of that is expected for June 2020 due to the continuing lockdown. Assuming the lockdown ends, the expectation is that in July percentage could increase to 50%, and that the situation could be back to normal in September.

“Our major markets of Europe and USA (to which 70% of our exports are directed) were very severely affected by COVID-19. Many buyers are filing bankruptcies which is a huge concern, leading to cancellation of export orders,” he added.

Image credits: Julian Yu on Unsplash

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