India: Leather exporters undergo whirl of pandemic

Kanpur: Why this year is proving to be so painful to the leather exporters? Not only the exports have been decreased but also there were no remarkable orders from foreign buyers.

According to the report of the Leather Export Council, the export has been gone down to 48 per cent. This is a big fall in terms of the business. Was it due to the Corona pandemic?

Dwelling upon this unstable situation, the Council's regional chairman Javed Iqbal said that there was running despondency among the exporters, adding that the exports from April to August have been reduced to half.

In such a scenario how could we visualise a better picture of our leather industry? The advance order for December 2020 to March '21 was said to be relatively negligible as has been stressed by the exporters.

He also stated that it would bring an adverse impact on the job which this sector normally generates.

He minced no words in saying how can we deny the financial loss? This is the third successive year when the leather sector has been registering a downward trend in the exports.

There was a fall of ten per cent in the year 2019 in comparison to the year 2018. In August of the year 2019, there were recorded exports of 428 million dollars while it was decreased to 356 million dollars up to August 2020 showing a drop of 17 per cent.

If we look at the exports of the last year's 5-month ( April to August) figure it remained 2053 million dollars. But this year's figure for the same five months has touched a figure of merely 1026 millions of dollars.