Industry Odisha Bureau, Jun 28: Despite the much-awaited US-Iran peace deal inked recently that was expected to bring a great relief to the Indian exporters as the freight costs had gone up beyond affiordable limits during the months-long West Asia crisis, the exporters in the Micro, Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (MSMEs) segment are reportedly bearing the brunt as there is no let-up in the situation.
Reports quoting aggrieved MSME exporters rued that a container that used to cost $400-500 are now charging $700-800. Also, the situation has been aggravated since there are acute shortages of the containers due to the hundreds of stranded containers still languishing amid the skirmishes in the Strait of Hormuz despite the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between USA and Iran.
Following the precarious scenario, the Indian MSMEs reportedly “lack the margin to bear the steep hike in freight costs, while MSMEs exporting perishable merchendise are being hit hard by the colossal loss due to the long wait for containers.”
Reports claimed that “steel prices are up almost 30%, while copper and brass prices have doubled as well as the packaging prices have also soared up.”
Reports also claimed that, Indian garment esporters exporting to the US and EU have to “cough up a pretty huge amounts in comparison to earlier, while the duration of the shipments have also become longer by two more weeks.”
The predicament is that the buyers (importers) are reportedly “hesitant to share the extra costs as they are also being bitten by the inflation stress in their respective countries.”
Reports said that the Indian MSMEs are “now facing the same problems of unbearable losses as they had suffered during pandemic (COVID) period.”
