With the border closed and India under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, local bricks producers are seeing a surge in demand. According to a local brick-manufacturing unit in Monggar, the increasing demand, these days, has kept the unit on its toes.
36-year-old Jamyang from Barpang in Monggar owns the Druk-Zen Bricks Manufacturing Unit in Monggar. He got the idea to set up the unit from his Indian friends when he was living in Samdrup Jongkhar.
Jamyang said he first set up the manufacturing unit in Samdrup Jongkhar but because of too much competition moved to Monggar. “I shut down the unit due to lack of market in Samdrup Jongkhar. As a result, I defaulted on the loan also. However, I thought that there is good business scope in Monggar and I moved the unit here,” he said.
And now because of the border closure, Jamyang earns better income by selling more bricks. On average he earns a net profit of Nu 15,000 every month from the unit. For each brick, he charges Nu 10. Moreover, to meet the growing demand for bricks, Jamyang has availed an additional loan from one of the banks to extend his manufacturing unit. He had already availed over Nu 1 M while establishing his project in 2017.
He said due to the bad weather, the production of the bricks is affected. The unit depends on the sun to dry the bricks before transporting. And he can hardly meet the demands pouring in. “Every day I sell 6,000 to 7,000 bricks in the locality when I am able to stockpile more bricks. So far I have supplied local bricks to Chagsakhar and Yadi in Monggar. I also get orders from other Dzongkhags as well but I couldn’t supply since I couldn’t meet the demand in the locality. Moreover, currently, I have only one machine to manufacture bricks,” he added.
Currently, there are only two local brick-manufacturing units in Monggar Dzongkhag and both units are having a hard time to meet the surge in demand for local bricks.
Initially, when the local brick-manufacturing units were first started in the country, they had a difficult time capturing the market since people couldn’t rely on the quality of local bricks. However, gradually the sale of locally manufactured bricks started picking up as government issued an executive order in 2015 to use locally produced bricks in public and government constructions.
Sonam Tshering
