Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said last week the economy was “poised to recover” as state-run banks approve more loans to small- and mid-sized businesses.
When Bharat Gite reopened his aluminum parts factories in India’s western city of Pune, he spent days servicing idle machines, sanitizing his premises and putting in place social distancing norms for staff.
His bigger problem now is convincing workers to return to their jobs after millions of Indians fled cities for their rural homes when Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown at the end of March. Gite supplies companies like General Electric Co., ABB Ltd. and Siemens AG, and he says sales orders have dried up. The two factories run by his Taural India Pvt. Ltd. are operating at just a tenth of their capacity and with 30% of labor, he says.
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“We haven’t heard from customers in the last two months,” Gite said by phone from Pune. “It’s totally a havoc situation. We don’t know what is going to happen.” The biggest uncertainty is “how to bring the workforce back,” he said. “It will take at least a year for the business to come back on track.”
Source: Financial Express
