Somany Ceramics Ltd., India’s third largest tile maker, doesn’t expect the disruption caused by the Goods and Services Tax to ease in the second half of the year to March even after the tax rate on the industry was lowered.
GST compliance-related hurdles have been a key negative for the company after the new nationwide sales tax was rolled out, Managing Director Abhishek Somany told BloombergQuint in an interview. “The first six months were a complete washout.”
The GST Council lowered the tax on tile makers from 28 percent to 18 percent on Nov. 15. Somany said that’s unlikely to help it boost revenue growth in the second half. “The kind of tailwind that we would have felt due to the rate cut will not be completely seen,” he said, attributing it to the delay in formalisation due to GST evasion and compliance issues. Deferring e-way bills, an electronic invoice for transporting goods, is another disadvantage, he said.
Edelweiss estimated a 16.5 percent compounded annual growth rate in the tile maker’s revenue in its report on home decor companies. Somany disagrees. There is a lot to be done on value-added and product-mix fronts, due to which the company might inch towards early double-digit growth only by 2019, he said.
The business is a 60-40 percent mix of own manufacturing and outsourcing, which has put the company in a fairly comfortable spot, he said. It will follow the model for the next two-three years, Somany said.
The GST-related pain period will only last for the next six months, and the growth shall rebound after that, he said. The government’s initiatives like ‘Housing for All’ will result in buoyant demand and with the tile maker’s expansion plans in place, growth should bounce back next year, he said.
Watch the full interview here.
Bloomberg Quint
