GST blues dampens print industry's July

18th day of July.

Ink sales down by 30% to 40%.

Vasai screen print zone, one of the biggest centres for spot UV and value addition with one firm averaging 35,000 to 40,000 sheets per day; downs shutter at 5pm. One such firm used to run a fully automatic screen printing in two shifts or with overtime.  The business is down by more than 35%. Please note: 90 customers are packaging offset printers. Most customers hope life will limp back once GST impact is normalised.

The turnover is "only Rs 3-lakh" thus far in a typical commercial print firm in Mumbai with a five-colour press and in-house CTP.

Since most operations are down to single shift, four to five days a week, labour has been impacted adversely due to no overtime.

As a result, day-to-day spend on consumables has taken a huge hit. The market is pretty sluggish in typical print pockets in city centres.

The only consolation one can get is that in the GST regime paper costs have reduced by at least 6% outside Mumbai and by 13.2% in Mumbai.

The impact on mini offset firms is the maximum. These are firms with no challans and bills in the GST era. They going through an existential crisis. What’s the new lifeline for them?

Please share your GST experience with Ramu Ramanathan

The eMail address is:  ramu@haymarketsac.com