The surge in prices of cotton and cotton yarn has hit the textile business in the city as out of the 740 weekly shops at E.K.M. Abdul Gani Textile Market (Gani Market), less than 400 shops functioned on Tuesday.
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The weekly shops function from Monday evening to Tuesday night while about 370 daily shops function on the market premises at Panneerselvam Park six-days a week. Both retail and wholesale business were carried out in weekly shops as merchants from across the State purchase garments and textile products and sell them in their respective areas.
But, on Tuesday, retail sales were about 30% while the wholesale business was 15%. “Increase in cotton and yarn prices have led to many units stopping production in the last one-and-half month”, said K. Selvaraj, president of the Erode Gani Market Weekly Textile Traders’ Association. He said that the price of cotton candy rose from ₹43,000 in 2020 to ₹1.10 lakh now forcing looms in many parts of the western region halting production.
Traders said that high yarn price, stopping production and increase in price of garments of about 30% have hit the textile shops hard as less than 30% of the customers turned for purchasing on Tuesday. Since school uniforms have to be purchased at any cost, we expect business to improve in the coming weeks. But we cannot expect profit, said a trader, Kannan.
Mr. Selvaraj said that against the usual business of ₹ 4 to ₹5 crore every week, sales realised was less than ₹50 lakh. “Less than 400 shops were open for business for the whole day”, he added. He wanted export of cotton yarn to be stopped immediately and to increase the import of cotton. “The State government should pressurise the Central government to take effective steps immediately to bring the situation under control”, he said and warned that many lakh of workers will be jobless if the current situation is allowed to continue.