Absence of finance options hurting sales of consumer durables

With waning option of finance schemes available for customers of consumer durables during the festive season, the revelry for white good manufacturers is certainly down.

Regional officials of consumer durable companies maintained that with banks and Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFCs) scaling down the lending operations, obviously the business is hurt.

Despite sales soaring high in the festive season, officials maintained that growth could have been more had the operations by various banks and NBFCs were not scaled down.

They added that since last year the number of companies offering financing options to buyers of consumer durables had significantly dwindled owing to various reasons.

As compared to 5-6 banking and NBFC that earlier used to provide the financing options to buyers of consumer durables, as of now only 2 are left. With couple of companies left in the fray, they have turned more severe while lending to the customers and this is also hurting the sales. The companies have also curtailed their operations, especially in rural areas where they believe chances of delinquencies are more.

The officials from consumer durable companies rue that in wake of lending companies turning extra cautious, specially in rural areas , buyers .had been hurt.

An official from LG Electronics maintained that the drying up of finance options was hurting.business more in rural areas that urban areas. “In urban areas people have the benefit of using plastic money but in rural areas obviously in absence of such facility, business was impacted. In urban areas also we have observed that the easy availability of finance options helped the customer in upgrading his purchase decision,” he said.

Similarly officials from Samsung Electronics maintained the slowdown in financing obviously was impacting the growth of business during this festive season. Although business was growing close to 50%, had finance options be available obviously growth could have been higher.