India’s Council for Leather Exports (CLE), the Indian agency that promotes and supports the leather industry, is placing very good expectations. In fact, they claim that India’s tanning turnover, coming from leather exports, will supposedly increase by 5 to 6% on annual basis. “The business trend kept going well until November – pointed out the president of CLE while speaking to The Hindu Business –. We hope that such positive performance will be confirmed at the end of the financial year, on March 31”. The council has been emphasizing the strong points of India’s leather industry (their livestock supply is one of the biggest in the world; furthermore, their manufacturing manpower is extremely advantageous in terms of costs) and pinpointing, at the same time, a profitable business opportunity: so far, the European Union proved to be India’s key market, which accounts for over 50% of exports. In addition, the commercial war between the United States and China is going to enable India to play a new connecting role between the two competitors. Yet, we humbly remark that CLE’s analysis is a little forgetful. In fact, the council forgot about difficulties which have been affecting one of India’s major tanning leather districts, namely the one based in Kanpur-Unnao: owing to Kumbh Mela religious feast, the leather district was forced to a quarterly closure, to abide by a decision imposed by Uttar Pradesh government. Since when? Since last December.
India’s Council for leather exports claims too optimistically: “We are going up”. They forget about Kanpur disaster though
