Post Event Report
Discusses the Difficult Situation Faced by the Glass Processing Industries Due to Covid-19 Lockdown
I
n view of the financial uncertainties and risk of life and business to the outbreak of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdown, Federation of Safety Glass (FOSG) called upon its members to conduct a webinar on ‘zero credit policy”. The webinar was attended by 281 participants across India. The past few months have been rather tough for the industry in general and for Glass industry in particular on account of Covid-19 issues, due to sudden lockdown of entire industries to prevent the spread of Corona (Covid-19) which resulted in a heavy financial loss to all the companies with all ready to dispatch orders, orders in progress which mostly got cancelled by the customers as their customers refused to take delivery of any products due to the shutdown of projects where the materials were supposed to be used. The cost incurred by the processors in terms of raw materials, manufacturing cost, etc. got stuck with no customer ready to pay against their given orders. The problem for the processors will persist even after the lockdown is revoked with labour and financial
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WFM | MAY - JUNE 2020
crises globally. The very viability of glass business in India is in question if this trend continues, especially when significant capital investments have been made in the glass industry and the depreciation of the Indian rupee in the last two months has further exacerbated the situation. The lockdown is having a very severe impact on business and industry with no inward payment and virtually no reserves, it is impossible for the industries to bear the entire business expenses such as salaries, PF, ESI, rentals, Bank interest, Bank EMI, electricity bills, etc. and it is certain that we cannot come out of this situation to normal in many years to come. The webinar on ‘zero credit policy’ was moderated by Tariq Kachwala (FG Glass), who gave a presentation on the subject focused on the adoption of zero credit policy by processors and at the same time asking their customers to do the same. It was stressed on the payment should be before delivery or by irrevocable L/C and looking at the uncertainties involved in PDC’s it was advised to say no to PDC. The panellists comprising of Farhat Kamil (Kaenat Glass
Industries), Suresh Shah (Ridhi Sidhi Glasses), Ajay Patel (Krishna Tuff Glass), Ali Asgar (Sapphire Glass Solutions), Palaniappan (Masss Glass India) and Varsha Konidala (Balaji Building Technologies). Farhat Kamil highlighted the problem of cash flow and the shortage of liquidity. He confirmed extending credit to its customers and taking the utmost care of those who were releasing payments even at the time of crisis and also offered discounts to customers for payments that were due. Suresh Shah emphasised on not extending credit to customers at
TARIQ KACHWALA, FG Glass (Moderator)
