Gems, jewellery exports likely to decline by 25-30% this fiscal due to Covid-19: GJEPC

04 Sep 2020 Evaluate

The Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) has said that exports of gems and jewellery are likely to decline by 25-30 per cent in the current fiscal as there was a ‘complete washout’ of the first quarter due to lockdown to curb spreading of the COVID-19. It added that there was a complete shutdown during the first quarter of this financial year (April-June) due to complete lockdown in India as well as the importing countries in order to curb the spread of the pandemic.

GJEPC Chairman Colin Shah said ‘even as things are improving the washout of the first quarter will have a cascading effect on the entire financial year’. He also said the next two quarters will continue to be challenging due to manufacturing restrictions. He noted that ‘Overall, we are expecting 25-30 per cent decline in gems and jewellery exports in 2020-21’. He said this year, there is going to be demand but manufacturing will be the challenge because a lot of workers have still not returned, and added that ‘we hope we can ramp up manufacturing to go up with the demand’.

Jewellery manufacturers were functioning with 25 per cent manpower keeping in line with state government guidelines amid the pandemic. Shah said from September 03, onwards, this limit has been increased to 50 per cent along with the rest of the safety guidelines that the manufacturers have to maintain. On the challenges expected during the next two quarters, he said that usually the season is from October to March, when most retail buying takes place due to festive seasons. He added that ‘the demand is strong and we expect things to be close to normal by then. We expect 10 per cent decline during the second and third quarters’.

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