Price of rubber hawai chappal is no more flat at your feet

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Thiruvananthapuram, June 3 : Even as the IPL commercial breaks have the Paragon ad featuring the new Rajnikant heroine (Shreya of Sivaji movie) to smartsell its rubber footwear, don't be swept off your feet by the glamourblitz. For the price of that rubber hawai chappal you wear may not come at that shoestring budget anymore.

Rubber hawai footwear will cost at least 9% more at MRP from next week, says Jose Joseph, president, Rubber Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association in Kerala. Export price will suffer a mark-up of 15% at one go, following the supply shortages in inputs like natural rubber, according to the Association.

And if the price cartel in rubber footwear industry - even among unbranded units - is any signpost, the footwear makers in Haryana, Punjab and Delhi are also walking the price set by their Kerala brethren. As much as 40% of the rubber footwear market is held by Kerala-based manufacturers, followed by those in Punjab and Haryana.

This mark-up would mean that if you picked up four pairs of unbranded hawai chappals from the cheapest footpath market for Rs 100 last time, the same amount would fetch your family only three in the current school season.

Natural rubber price, crossing the Rs 120 per kilo mark, is not the only reason. Many key chemical inputs, involved in the footwear processing, now cost 35% more in just an year, says KM Hamid Ali, Secretary, footwear manufactorers and exporters association, Kerala.

But, rubber chappals have been too price sensitive to afford rash decisions. Would the manufacturers eat their words on price revison? "Only if we are spared of VAT and central excise, allowed cuts in electrictiy rates and cess slapped by the Rubber Board," says P Dharmarajan, a rubber footwear manufacturer in Kozhikode.

In States like Punjab, far away from the rubber-producing Kerala, rubber hawai chappal industry is in bad shape. In Jalandar, which had over 450 rubber footwear SMEs in 1995, there are little more than 60 surviving units now. Even before the current price-pressures, hawaii chappal started getting partially edged out of the market by plastic equivalents. "Adding to the cost woes, we have to cough up 12.5% VAT and 15% excise duty on tread rubber," says Mukund Gupta," who runs a rubber-based unit in Punjab.