Coronavirus Impact: Garment Industry Staring At Worst Ever Crisis

COVID-19 has hit several sectors hard and while some could bounce back, the future of many remains uncertain. The pandemic has disrupted supply chains across sectors worldwide.

One of the worst-hit areas is the clothing and apparel sector. Apart from workers in India, exporters and manufacturers would normally employ workers in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the world. The COVID-19 outbreak has changed all that. Things came to a grinding halt in many of the industries and it is very likely that they would never be the same again.

For manufacturers, orders have either dried up or got cancelled. Things are not the same for their clients either. Payments pile up and clients demand discounts in some cases. Goods in transit also remain stuck in overseas ports. The universal culprit affecting whole communities of industries and workers in the garment sector, as in other fields, is the COVID-19 outbreak.

For one thing, the raw material for garment manufacturers has to be sourced from China. Incidentally, China is the biggest exporter of textiles in the world. Just when China recovered from the impact of COVID-19 and its factories opened, lockdowns in other countries choked the textile supply chain completely. Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Cambodia are among developing countries which depend heavily on the garment industry.

The economic impact of the COVID-19 impact could leave millions of workers jobless and force them into poverty. Raw material price hikes are also a cause of worry for manufacturers. Some retailers, who benefited over the years, from a low-cost, outsourced business model may stand by their suppliers and workers. The nagging question, however, remains, for how long.

India is the world's fourth-largest producer of textile and garments and is a major provider of employment, apart from being a major foreign exchange-earner. The garment industry has a string of ancillary industries depending on it, which could, in turn, get severely impacted. Like other sectors, the garment industry is looking forward to a bailout from the government in this hour of crisis.