Morbi in Gujarat is the ceramic hub of India and produces 90% of the country’s ceramics and 13% of the global ceramics. Industrialist Anand Mahindra has recently appreciated the town’s small town entrepreneurs as the “Bahubalis” of Indian business. With almost a thousand family owned factories Morbi’s ceramic industry has been growing since the year 1930s producing tiles as good as Italy and as cheap as China. The industry is worth thousands of crores and creates four lakh jobs and thus makes India a significant player in the ceramic world. However, lately, the ceramic exports from Morbi are facing severe challenges. The anti-dumping duties of 50% to 106% imposed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Taiwan have affected the sales; the trade restrictions on Iran have created a supply problem to export to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. These have forced costly alternative shipping routes to be taken and thus have increased the overall costs. Rising gas prices are another domestic concern as the industry uses 3 million cubic meters of gas every day. Now, the manufacturers have asked the government to reduce the tax on gas consumption and also asked for a change from VAT to GST and input tax credit to help continue the operations. Despite all these, Morbi’s business community is still capable of maintaining and further enhancing India’s position as a ceramic power in the global market, and this success story has emerged from small towns to show that real world class success is possible.
Morbi Challenging China in the Ceramic Industry
