Tamil Nadu - Cuddalore   

Cuddalore retail economy booming

Vani Doraisamy

`Converting tragedy into opportunity' has become an everyday reality

CUDDALORE: In Cuddalore, the phrase `converting tragedy into opportunity' is not a cliché anymore but everyday reality. If last year's tsunami ruined lives and livelihood of thousands of fisherfolk, it also set off an unprecedented upswing in the fortunes of a few others.

Watch K. Ramachandran of Iniyan Fibres at work and you will understand what `calamity prospecting' means. Eight years ago, he returned from Sharjah's Al Bermuda Fibreglass Boat Yard to set up Iniyan Traders and Fibres in Cuddalore to build fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) boats. Business was good but never booming until the tsunami happened.

With funds-rich NGOs landing in Cuddalore with endless orders for boat building, there has been no looking back.

Even by his own admission, he built upwards of 300 FRPs in just four months, each ranging from Rs. 80,000 upwards.

And there were also 250 canoes, costing Rs. 20,000 and more each.

During the `peak season' he churned out three boats daily, as NGO orders meant he had a short time-delivery schedule. He also supplied boats to NGOs in Nagapattinam, Villupuram, Thanjavur and Muttukkadu.

Naturally, quality suffered: "During the first few months, we received quite a few complaints as we had to recruit inexperienced labourers to cope with the demand."

Iniyan Fibres, which also trades in fishnets, is the only firm building FRPs in Cuddalore and NGOs alone have given away 1,215 fibre boats and 2,000 fishnets so far. The NGO largesse also spun off assorted other gains: prices of raw materials for building the boats went up, as did the demand for Greaves motors and Exide batteries.

Though exact figures are not available, traders say the prices of cement, steel and sand also went up with the spate of constructions going on: in 31 villages, NGOs are building around 2,322 permanent houses, with 1,679 more in the pipeline. And then there was the real estate: with NGOs ready to put up huge rents for strategically-located properties, brokers never had it so good.

In just four months, S. Sampath Kumar, a broker operating out of Old Town, has expanded his one-man business and is well and truly into business.

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