: Indian retail sector lost Rs 5.50 lakh crore, says CAIT #FinanceIndia #StockMarketNEWS New Delhi, May 6 (KNN) Indian retail sector has lost a whopping Rs 5.50 lakh crore in the last 40 days lockdown

@StockMarketNEWS Mon 11 May, 2020

Posted in: #FinanceIndia #StockMarketNEWS

Indian retail sector lost Rs 5.50 lakh crore, says CAIT #FinanceIndia #StockMarketNEWS
New Delhi, May 6 (KNN) Indian retail sector has lost a whopping Rs 5.50 lakh crore in the last 40 days lockdown which was imposed in order to contain COVID-19 spread.

Ever since the lockdown was imposed on March 24th, the Indian retail sector has lost a gigantic sum of approximately 5.50 lakh crore in this period and is likely to witness at least 20% of Indian retailers collapse and wind up their businesses in the next few months, said CAIT in a statement on Tuesday.

In light of the same, the CAIT has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to handhold the trading community and award a substantial package to the traders to ensure their survival.

Indian retailers do a daily business of around 15,000 crore and the country is in a lockdown for over 40 days now that means there is a massive loss of over 5.50 lakh crore of business which is done by 7 crore traders of India from March 25th to April 30th. Out of these 7 crore traders, in all likelihood around 1.5 crore traders will have to permanently down the shutters in a few months and a further 75 lakh traders who are dependent on these 1.5 crore traders will fold up in the medium term, said CAIT National President B C Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal.

At least 2.5 crore traders in India are micro and small in nature who do not have deep pockets to sustain this severe economic catastrophe, he said.

On the one hand they are having to pay salaries, rentals, other monthly expenses and on the other hand they will have to deal with a sharp dip in disposable income of consumers along with strict social distancing norms which will not allow business to return to normalcy for at least 6-9 months, Khandelwal said.

The Indian economy was already passing through a recessionary phase and there was significant downturn in demand across sectors, but this deadly disease has delivered the knockout punch and washed away all hopes of revival, Khandelwal added.

They further said that the Indian retail sector is literally on ventilator mode and without the immediate intervention of the government which is by and large responsible for this chaos, the sector will suffer unprecedented damage.

The economic pandemonium will be even bigger than the Corona pandemic, they added.