Shweta Bhanot Mehrotra
In an email-based interview with Shweta Bhanot Mehrotra, Mr. Anuj Jain, Director – Decorative and Industrial Sales & Marketing, Kansai Nerolac Paints Ltd. (KNPL) talks about GST preparedness and its benefits on the overall demand in the business.
Q. Over the last couple of years, domestic paints industry has grown at a significant rate. Do you see it sustainable under the new tax (GST) environment?
GST is a good and simple reform for all the industries, it is a welcome step. The concept of one nation, one tax will bring transparency into the system and we feel that it is beneficial for the overall demand in the business. Since GST is a consumption-based tax, for those states where the consumption is high, the revenues will go up and the benefits will be positive.
Q. Where do you position KNPL in this new environment and what are the challenges?
Whenever changes are introduced in any system, teething issues are bound to surface. It will be a learning and growing experience for everyone, the one which will take time. We have to see how it pans out to completely understand the challenges. It will be too soon to predict accurately all the nuances.
At Kansai Nerolac, we started to integrate GST with our systems much in advance. We conducted workshops for our teams, dealers and other partners to make sure that we do not face any major issues once GST is implemented. All these preparations made us to start GST billing smoothly. However, since we also deal with many small dealers, there are some initial issues in getting GST numbers on time, there is also confusion about how to file the return, rigidity of the system and so on.
Q. Considering that the industry volumes have been dawning out of the impact of demonetisation, and now the expected GST-driven near-term disruption, what is your outlook on the segment performances?
The impact of demonetisation was temporary and the demand was back in February. After the implementation of GST, the primary demand was affected in June due to destocking by the traders. However, there was no impact on the secondary demand. We foresee that traders will take some time to understand the new system but the situation will be normal from August.
Q. If you can throw some light on the warehouse consolidation that might be planned over the coming quarters under the GST era?
Most of our warehouses are created with the objective of servicing hence, we do not see any consolidation in the near future.
Q. With the three new plants coming up, what will be KNPL's overall India capacity?
The new manufacturing plants coming up in Punjab, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh will increase the overall manufacturing capacity of Kansai Nerolac by 35%.
Chemical Market has been in the industry since almost 40 years. We owe our success to you and since the last few years things have been crazy for the world at large. The editorial independence has never been more important.
Our articles and press releases come from reliable sources and we keep delivering high impact trustworthy news, reviews and technical articles and reports free from commercial or political influence.
We believe everyone deserves equal access to accurate news and there are many news aggregator sites but we don't participate in those as they have a very broad criteria where not all news articles sites can participate and not all of them are true articles written for the purpose of knowledge but mostly are commercialized. We bring you news and information in the chemical industry and provide vital information to make decisions based on fact and not fiction.
Subscribe our magazine for as little as Rs.50 a month (Rs. 600/yr) or $1 a month ($11.99/yr)
