The government has to invest more on infrastructure projects

We continue to invest in our R & D to keep enhancing what we have achieved in our innovation field.

- P. Ramesh, Managing Director & CEO, Wirtgen India

How do you foresee the short and midterm growth prospects?

The short term and medium term prospect for CE sector is quite grim and we expect dramatic drop in volumes, even after the lockdown is lifted, as it will take some time for the road projects to be fully operational in lieu of the workers and  migrant labourers moving away from the jobsites. We expect things to start reviving only post monsoon, assuming that we don't have a second wave of Covid coming back.             

What is the impact on production, supply chain and service back up areas?

Our Pune plant is closed since last week of March and we expect that it will be at least another 4 weeks, for production to pick up, as we need to receive material from our suppliers, both in India and also from abroad. As far as service activities are concerned, even during the lockdown period our service engineers are still active in eastern part of India- in the mining belt, where our surface miners are still operational because coal is an essential commodity for power plants and our parts depots are also open.    We are also planning to apply for permissions to open all our other depots and also trying to get necessary passes for our engineers and service team to be available at sites on field.     

What sort of Central / state government initiatives that the industry needs for a faster revival?

The first step what is required is to ensure that the rules across the states are the same so that there is no confusion, for the infra activities to get into full swing at the earliest. For the equipment demand to pick up, the government has to invest more on infra projects but, with the Covid crisis being the top priority, it looks like this year could be a tough time for the government to focus on infra sector, as they would already have quite high revenue expenditure.

With the market contracting so badly, what will be your revival strategies post covid-19?

Market contraction is always a good opportunity for us to look internal at our processes and costs and come out of this crisis as a more efficient operation and to look at the products, customer requirements once things come back to normal. Even during this crisis, we would continue to invest in our R & D to keep enhancing what we have achieved in our innovation field, across all our product line.        

What are the silver linings?

We don't see any silver lining because the CE sector was already on the downward turn since 2019 where the industry volume had dropped almost 40 % and the Covid situation has only aggravated the problem.       

Give us a brief on the CSR activities during these troubling times?

We have already donated to the PM Cares fund for the Covid through our CSR channel as well as our employees have also contributed generously towards this fund. We would shortly donate funds to an NGO for relief work to the Covid victims on ground. Locally we are supporting families who are daily wage earners - with groceries and other essentials. Also have initiated support to the local police by providing sanitizers, masks and other relevant equipment.

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