Leather goods exporters arelikely to suffer a 40-50 per cent decline in shipments in the current fiscal owing to the coronavirus outbreak, an official said on Thursday.Around 25 per cent of exports is already eroded and the decline in business will continue given the unprecedented situation and no major relief measures from the government, Ramesh Juneja of the Council of Leather Exports said."This year, total exports to our traditional buyers would not be more than 50 per cent," Gautam Rajda, MD of Rajda Industries and Exports, told PTI."We expect that retail demand would also stay muted in the major importing economies like Europe and the US," he added.Some European buyers, however, are trying to shift contracts from China to other countries like India, but that will take another six-nine months, Rajda said.India exports leather products worth USD 5.5-6 billion annually."Importers from the US, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany have either cancelled contracts or put them on hold," Juneja said.Some shipments of existing orders are being sent to scandinavian countries, where the impact of the lockdown is minimal, but that is "20 per cent of our normal activity", Rajda said.A few new orders have started arriving but in a very limited way, he said.In West Bengal, some tanneries and leather manufacturing units in Bantala are operational for the last two weeks, but with skeletal workforce.
