Mumbai Inc yet to press restart button

Flood-Ravaged Corporate India is yet to attain normalcy. Though rains stopped and flood water started receding, many units in industrial bel...

Flood-Ravaged Corporate India is yet to attain normalcy. Though rains stopped and flood water started receding, many units in industrial belts like Patalganga, Belapur and Thane are still reeling under the impact of the worst rains in a century.

Adding to their woes, cargo movement through the roads is still paralysed. Hundreds of trucks are stuck in the highways around Mumbai. ‘‘We expect the situation to become normal only by Saturday. As of now, trucks with raw materials and finished goods are held up in various places,’’ said an official of a small plastic manufacturing company based near Mumbai.

The Patalganga unit of Reliance Industries is yet to re-open. But HPCL hopes to resume normal operations at its 110,000 barrel-per-day Mumbai refinery by Friday. ‘‘We have begun work to restart the refinery. We expect normal operations by tomorrow,’’ HPCL’s director of refineries M.A. Tankiwala, said. Its neighbour in Chembur, Bharat Petroleum is also expected to re-start its refinery tomorrow.

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What has added to the misery of many industrial units is the prolonged power cut. When flood water entered electric sub-stations of power suppliers like MSEB and Reliance Energy, power was switched off. Many small units don’t have provisions for power supply from generators.

Many companies were also forced to postpone their board meetings to consider the quarterly results. Raymonds postponed its board meeting by a day, as did Alstom Projects. Kesar Enterprises, Arvind Mills, Gujarat Ambuja Cement, and IDBI Bank also rescheduled their board meetings.

On the other hand, major stock exchanges like the BSE and the NSE and banks which remained shut today are expected to open for business on Friday. The markets are likely to face turbulent trading on Friday. The ONGC fire is likely to put a spoke on the wheels of the bull bandwagon. ‘‘Oil companies will face selling pressure when the market resumes for trading on Friday,’’ said a BSE dealer.

With banks remaining closed on Wednesday and Thursday, no banking transaction has taken place in the commercial capital. This also affected the functioning of corporates. RBI also had to postpone its weekly auctions. There were complaints of non-functional ATMs in many places.