Expanding Horizon

The industry hopes to expand its footprint in the coming year. Read on to know the industry plans to achieve its ambitions.

- Swati Deshpande

After much ups and downs, the Indian manufacturing sector witnessed improvement in December 2017. According to Nikkei India Manufacturing PMI, The Indian manufacturing sector ended the year on a strong note, with operating conditions improving at the strongest rate in five years. The overall upturn was supported by the sharpest increase in output and new orders since December 2012 and October 2016 respectively.

The year 2017 began with the reparations of demonetisation while in the later months, GST also impacted the industry adversely for a short period of time. Speaking on the same, T.V. Narendran, MD &CEO, Tata Steel says, “2017 saw a recovery in global steel demand, prices and trade leading to better than expected performance by India’s steel sector. The year not only saw India becoming the third largest steel producer in the world, it managed to successfully reverse the trend of increasing imports as it became a net exporter. Globally, G20 through the GFSEC has been working on addressing the excess steel capacity and we expect to see more work towards this endeavor in 2017-18. Focusing on the need to improve domestic demand, Govt of India’s National Steel Policy 2017 has drawn the long term road map for steel vision in India.”

Gunjan Srivastava, Managing Director & CEO, BSH Household Appliances mentions, “For BSH Household Appliances, 2017 has seen positive impact on business. Owing to demonetizstion and the GST implications, the consumer durables industry was marginally impacted. However, it did not have an immediate effect on our growth momentum. In fact, sales in the month of June amplified as dealers were trying to liquidate their stocks which caused the following months to be sluggish compared to last year. Having said that, the growth rate in 2017 has been consistent to the growth rate we achieved in the previous year.”