Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: Current lockdown restrictions across many states and metros could price at least about 40 per cent of the month-to-month earnings of micro retailers, according to the Federation of Retailer Association of India (FRAI), a representative body for about 4 crore micro, modest, and medium retailers in India. “The impact will be across sectors particularly for non-essential categories while kirana stores may have some respite much like last year. If there is a complete and prolonged lockdown across the country then stores retailing non-essential goods and services will be reduced to zero revenue and would have to shut down,” Vinayak Kumar, Secretary-General, FRAI told TheSpuzz Online.
Ever given that the second Covid wave struck India post-mid-February and gathered pace last month, state governments have been scrambling with measures to curb the rise in every day instances and stretch the finite healthcare infrastructure. While weekend lockdown continues in Maharashtra, Delhi will be below comprehensive lockdown till 6 am, April 26. Uttar Pradesh government had announced a lockdown on Sundays and evening curfew in districts with more than 500 instances. On the other hand, Karnataka had imposed evening curfew in a number of districts even though Kerala mandated shops to shut by 9 pm. Other states exactly where evening curfews have been imposed integrated Odisha, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Bihar, and so forth.
For Delhi, the every day business enterprise loss due to lockdown is probably to be about Rs 600 crore even though for all round India, the every day loss could be about Rs 30,000 crore taking into account complete lockdown, partial lockdown, evening curfews and other types of restrictions,” Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary-General, Confederation of All India Traders, told TheSpuzz Online.
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Till last Tuesday, traders had suffered an estimated business enterprise loss of about Rs 46 crore for the duration of the 10-day evening curfew and partial lockdown in diverse states out of which the retail trade loss was about Rs. 32,000 crores even though the wholesale business enterprise suffered a loss of about Rs 14,000 crores, according to CAIT.
“Garments and apparel business was yet to recover to its pre-Covid revenue but with new restrictions in place, we are staring at a total business loss and possible shutdown if the lockdown extends beyond next week. Similar is the situation for shops selling goods other than grocery and food items in markets across Delhi NCR,” Abhinav Singh, a shop owner in Delhi’s Karol Bagh marketplace told TheSpuzz Online.
“We had urged Piyush Goyal and other ministers to give respite to tobacco and wine retailers and operate under strict guidelines as the shutdown of such shops would also cost significant tax revenue loss to the government. While the Mudra loan scheme had supported them but after lockdown, there is no relief. Retailers are already at 98 per cent loss while around 30 per cent in Telangana might be shut,” Sallauddin Deccani, Vice President, FRAI Telangana Chapter told TheSpuzz Online.