New Delhi – 28th February, 2020 – The ongoing Covid-19 crisis across the world has disrupted the business environment in an unprecedented manner. The businesses across sectors are suddenly finding themselves in the face of multiple challenges at the same time including growing liquidity crunch, supply chain breakdowns, labour shortages and falling revenues due to depressed consumer demand. In such a scenario, exporters are facing the double whammy of disrupted manufacturing operations at home and payment risks emanating from buyer’s side. In order to support the exporters to surmount the business challenges amid ongoing Covid-19 crisis, ECGC has undertaken various measures to support the exporter policyholders and hence a webinar on International Trade Risk Mitigation through ECGC. Mr. Saurabh Srivastava, Branch Manager, Delhi, SME branch ECGC as expert faculty was organised by EPCH.
Shri Ravi K. Passi, Chairman – EPCH, Shri Raj Kumar Malhotra, Vice Chairman – EPCH and Shri R.K. Verma, ED –EPCH, Mr. Rajuesh Kumar Jain, Exmart International & President – Social Media – EPCH, Mr. Nabeel Ahmad, COA – Member-EPCH, Mr. Rishi Tulsyan of Deco De Trend, Chennai and Mr. Ijlal Shamsi, Paramount Home Collections, Moradabad took part in the webinar.
Mr. R.K. Passi, Chairman – EPCH while speaking on the occasion said that ECGC should not take time to pay to the exporters on filing the application and urged ECGC to settle the claims at the earliest.
Shri R.K. Verma, Executive Director – EPCH said that businesses all around the world are facing tough situation, today’s webinar deliberated on risks which the exporters face in the International business specific to the payment from overseas buying community and in order to mitigate the risks, ECGC provides various policy covers to small and medium exporters to safeguard them from such risks. Mr. Verma appreciated that under the circumstances, ECGC have modified their policies to provide the support to the Indian exporters.
Shri Saurabh Srivastava, Branch Manager, ECGC while addressing the participants explained the role and mission of ECGC which is to provide cost effective services to the Indian exporters. During covid 2019 pandemic, exporters are facing problems and ECGC have taken various measures which included extending time line for all returns upto 31/5/2020, time line for claim, waiver of credit guarantee application fee till 30th June, 2020 and 50% reduction in policy proposal fee for policies due to renewal from March 020 to till 30th June, 2020 and many more.
Mr. Rajesh Jain, Exmart International and Incharge Social media – EPCH said that taking of cover of ECGC is very important to save the business which has been set up by every individual exporter with the hard earned money. He also said that number of exporters do not take seriously taking ECGC cover and said in recent past due to cancellation of orders by very creditworthy buyers, exporters who had taken ECGC cover are feeling secure and those who did not are facing difficulty.
Mr. Rishi Tulsyan, Deco De Trend, Chennai said that webinar on the subject was the need of the hour and policy of ECGC is like shield to the business of the Indian exporter. He asked from the expert that is there any provision made by ECGC to provide cover before the shipment and how ECGC will cope up with credit worthiness of the buyers who are cancelling the orders.
Mr. Raj Kumar Malhotra, Vice Chairman – EPCH speaking on the occasion said that ECGC should introduce ease of doing business as their terms for releasing payment to the affected exporters are very cumbersome and handicrafts sector belongs to small and small and medium exporters who do not have such set up to comply with their terms.
While agreeing with Mr. Rajesh Jain and Mr. Raj Kumar Malhotra, another panellist Mr. Nabeel Ahmad, COA member EPCH talked about ease of doing business by ECGC, pre-shipment cover, cover for new buyers and also provide SOP for air shipments.
Mr. Ijlal Shamsi, Paramount Home Collections, Moradabad said that so far he has not faced any difficulty in payment with the buyers but on the observations of other panelists he also stressed that ECGC should implement ease of doing business. He advised a portal should be made available where exporters can register the name of buyers and data of defaulted buyers should be maintained for credit worthiness of the buyers.
In the end, the expert Mr. Saurabh Srivastava answered all the questions of the participants and webinar ended with offering thank to the expert, panellists and participants. Over 500 participants joined the webinar and also viewed live on Facebook.
