The outbreak of Covid-19 has led to complete disruption of air cargo activities whereby the production and finalization of the goods which were almost ready to dispatch by the shippers have been halted. Such an abrupt dislocation in the planned dispatch resulted in a huge financial loss to the exporters. Moreover, the goods which were already en-route to their destination have either been delayed or held at transit points or rerouted due to possible closure of airports at the destination.

Overall, the exporters fraternity has to further face a heavy fiscal blows since orders from the overseas buyers have taken a break in view of the prevailing situations across the globe apart from the pending payments towards the goods already sent are also blocked by the buyers. The lockdown restrictions in the country has severely affected the supply chain added with shortage of workforce on ground & transport thereby causing unmanageable roadblocks in undertaking even fraction of the functions. It is further added that significant cargo capacity was either completely lost or under utilised due to curtailment of flights all over the world.

It is evident the entire cargo exporters trade coupled with freight forwarding & logistics industry have faced an unprecedented loss of revenue due to the pandemic leading to strict lockdown and discontinuation of the entire related activities. Therefore, a comprehensive package comprising various vital relief to the exporters and agents/logistics fraternity is anticipated from the government to overcome the present crisis, the woes of which would take a long time to heal for all the stakeholders even after the current situations limp back to normal. Further, the freight forwarding trade would be required to chalk out dynamic sales & rigorous functional activities post normalcy in close coordination with the shippers.