Industrial production down 50%

As lack of movement of vehicles due to bandas sparked shortage of industrial raw materials, entrepreneurs, mainly exporters, said their productions have been badly hit and presently gone down by over 50 percent.
Worse is, exporters said the garment industry, which was gradually building its lost reputation in the international market, has once again stopped getting orders. "The production has been affected by series of bandas called by various groups," Udaya Raj Pandey, president of the Garment Association Nepal (GAN), told Republica on Tuesday.
According to Pandey, readymade garments (RMG) production has gone down by around 50 percent lately due to lack of raw materials. "Because of this, some of the factories have already suspended production."
The industry, which was exporting RMG worth around Rs 5 billion per year over the past three years, has also lost credibility in the international market. "It seems we would lose deals worth Rs 1.5 billion due to bandas, as we have failed to deliver consignments on time," Pandey added.
Similarly, carpet industry, which is one of the country´s major export items, has seen production go down by as much as 80 percent. According to Ram Gurung, vice-president of the Nepal Carpet Exporters´ Association (NCEA), most of the carpet factories are closed due to banda. Carpet industry produces 2,000 meters of carpet per day when the situation is normal.
According to our Biratnagar correspondent Ajit Tiwari, most of the factories in the Morang-Sunsari corridor have suspended operations due to severe scarcity of raw materials. Cargo trucks carrying raw materials from India have been stranded in the yard of Biratnagar Customs Office.
Meanwhile, industrialists in Morang-Sunsari corridor have submitted a memorandum to customs officials, requesting them to waive off detention charge on parked cargo vehicles. The customs office charges as much as Rs 2,500 per day on vehicles parked in the yard of customs office.
According to industrialists, thousands of cargo vehicles are stranded at Tatopani, Biratnagar and Birgunj customs for the past few days.
As many as 428 cargo trucks are lying stranded at Birgunj Inland Container Depot. The number of trucks stranded at the depot was 390 on Monday.
“Goods imported from Bangladesh are lying at Banglabanda land port," Rajan Sharma, president of the Nepal Freight Forwarders´ Association (NFFA), said. "Officials from Bangladesh Freight Forwarders´ Association have communicated us about the situation there. But the problem is that the Banglabanda land port doesn´t have adequate space for parking additional cargo vehicles.”
(With inputs from Ritesh Tripathi in Birgunj.)