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G. Gurumurthy

The slapping of the embargo against the garment shipments allowed from India by the US port authorities too added to the stalemate. Hence the feeling of lack of quota.

COIMBATORE, Dec. 29

THE less than the normal tonnage of export cargo hauled in the airport cargo complex as also in the Inland Container Depots (ICDs) in Coimbatore has taken away the sheen on cargo rush for December, when export cargo movement peaks.

The low volume of cargo, especially from Tirupur this month, has left the cargo operators clueless here.

With few days to go for the December to close, the volumes of shipments handled both at the private ICD in Tirupur and the CWC-run ICD at Singanallur have reported sluggish cargo movement to the gateway ports.

The scene is no different either at the international air cargo complex at the Coimbatore airport where export cargo volume too has been sluggish throughout this month, reliable sources say.

"Last year during the month of December alone we handled about 1,350 containers but this year till December 27 we had handled about 900-odd containers. In the remaining four days, we may end up doing another 200/300 containers at most. Still we'll fall short of volume for the whole month this time compared to last year's December," sources in the Lemiur run Tirupur Container Terminals Pvt Ltd said.

Sources in the ICD run by CWC at Singanallur too conceded that their volume of shipments this year too remained low, but they were not willing to give the exact number of containers they handled for the month. The shippers and the shipping agents in Tirupur blame the drop in volume of cargo generation on what they call `the lack of export quotas' available to the garment exporters/ knitwear producers during the tail-end months this year.

Bulk of the December shipments from Coimbatore has to come from Tirupur garment industry, which are delivery specific and will normally meet the December deadline.

Tirupur garment shipments being voluminous cargo are essentially sea-bound cargo. Barring the late shipments that are turn into air cargo to avoid delivery slip-ups, Tirupur shippers prefer road route to move their cargo in time to gateway ports.

But this year at least two significant developments occurring mid-course of the quota year seem to have altered the natural course in the cargo movement from Tirupur.

The heavy demand for quota especially to the EU and the US exports in the Tirupur specific garment category Nos.four and 338/339 seen in the August and September months, which subsequently led to most leading garment shippers fully using their quota levels then itself and increased preference to sending open shipment by road to Mumbai by the shippers this time have halted the cargo movement in November/December months.

Some amount of advance planning, especially at the instance of the garment importers in Europe who wanted Tirupur shippers to move the supplies sufficiently in advance to Mumbai, so that the lead time to reach the goods to the European ports are brought down, has significantly reduced the year-end volume pile up, sources in the garment industry say.

Tirupur exporters, having exhausted their quotas well in advance before October this year, were eagerly looking forward for release of additional quotas by adjusting the quotas against the 2003 entitlements for the EU exports but this failed to materialise.

The slapping of the embargo against the garment shipments allowed from India by the US port authorities too added to the stalemate. Hence the feeling of lack of quota. But otherwise, the Tirupur exporters managed to have their regular exporter orders and complied with their production schedule much ahead this year too, sources said.

The knitwear export statistics for Tirupur region do indicate the hyper export activity in the months of September and October.

During September 2002, there has been a 13 per rise in the volume of exports compared to the exports made in same period in the previous year.

In October there was 8 per cent jump in the volume over last year. However, in November, there was a three per cent decline in the knitwear exports over the corresponding period of last year.

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