Interview with Prakhar Singh

Prakhar Singh
Country Manager (India/Bangladesh)
GA Morgan

With government’s support it can be win-win situation

Morgan Tecnica offers the largest and most modern range of solutions for the cutting room. It produces several types of roll loading and handling systems, automatic spreaders, spreading tables, labellers, automatic cutters and plotters. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, Prakhar Singh, Country Manager of GA Morgan, a division of Morgan Tecnica SPA, discusses about how the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the textile machinery supply chain, the possible solutions the industry and the government should together come out with.

The current COVID-19 crisis has brought the entire textiles-apparel production, supply chain, and retail sales to a grinding halt. How do you see this impacting textile machinery manufacturers and suppliers? How is your supply chain being hit? Are you facing cancellation of orders?

Yes, the entire industry is going through turmoil and since the textile/garment machineries and garments are inter-related, we are getting affected as well. The supply chain has taken a huge hit and it is difficult to make any predictions. Exporters are facing cancellations of orders and they are in turn asking their machinery suppliers either to hold on or cancel their orders and we are no exceptions.

Post lockdown, what are the problems you foresee and how do you plan to help your clients with respect to after-sales service and spare parts?

Post lockdown, the major problem would be to get back the labourers who have migrated to their natives. We are contemplating to give some machines/software on a rental basis. Service and spare parts still remain the backbone of our industry and we are geared up for any kind of challenge in that area. In fact we have been working on it for the past one year and in the current scenario we are better placed.

What do you think the government can do to further ease pain of textile machinery manufacturing companies? Any thoughts on rallying together as a key niche of the value chain to arrive at some workable plan to get through these difficult times?

The government can adopt various measures in order to help the machinery manufacturers and at the same time projecting India as the next major manufacturing hub. Manufacturers would be wary of sourcing goods/machineries from countries like China. Government can boost the morale and at the same time focus more on the ‘Make in India’ concept by providing loans at easy returns, subsidies and relaxation on GST. With government’s support it can be a win-win situation where in the industry would get the required upliftment and in turn the industry growth will help in boosting the economy. (PC)

Published on: 28/04/2020

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.