An expected swerve in commodity prices has compounded miseries for utensil manufacturers in Jagadhri, the metal town of Haryana, as growth figures both on domestic end as well as export end are likely to be under stress.
Bharat Garg, general secretary of Jagadhri Metal Association, maintained that growth in the aluminum utensil market this year is not likely to match growth in the previous years.
“Definitely we are not looking at growth we achieved last year both in domestic front as well as exports front,” he said.
Commodity prices since last few months have been vacillating amidst concern of slowing down of manufacturing activity in most of the economies across globe. Amidst concerns of slowing manufacturing growth this is likely to result in slowing demand for raw materials.
Tarun Goyal, president Jagadhri Aluminum utensil manufacturing Association, maintained as commodity prices come down the benefits are passed on to the consumers immediately , however the supply and demand equations remains unbalanced.
It is estimated the Rs 500-crore Aluminum Utensil Industry of Jagadhri that constitutes 6 per cent of total aluminum utensil industry of India.
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Garg believes sudden fluctuations in commodity prices irrespective of the direction(up or down) are dangerous for the traders as this perplexes the mind of buyers who in anticipation of better bargain tries to procrastinate the orders.
Amidst fear of recession looming large especially in Europe and US markets , aluminum manufacturer in the region maintain export to these two countries would also derail the export growth for them.
However new markets identified in 2008 especially Middle east and African market could somewhat help these manufacturer weather the storm.
Things on the domestic fronts are not too rosy as per the utensil manufacturers. Even back home the demand has not picked up as ideally the aluminum utensil manufacturers would have liked.
Tarun Goyal adds the supply has outpaced the demand suggesting disturbance in the equilibrium.