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<ul><li>Jockey and Speedo seller Page Industries has seen a 13.8% fall in profits while gross margin is down to 40%. </li><li>Rising competition and rising costs are making the slowdown worse. </li><li>The $1.9 billion Sunder Genomal family that had a dream run with Jockey for years is facing headwinds now. </li><li>Mirae Asset Blue Chip Fund and Kotak Emerging Equity Scheme were among shareholders at the end of December 2019. </li></ul>The 1% decline in the share price of Page Industries, or the nearly 14% fall in quarterly profit, is not the entire story. 2019-20 is turning out to be more difficult than ever before due to three reasons— rising competition, rising input costs, and slowing demand. Profit margin is constantly shrinking— gross margin is down from over 63% at the end of March 2019 to 40% in December— for the company, which is sole licence holder for Jockey and Speedo brands, in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and the UAE. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 The latest third quarter saw 13.8% fall in profit to ₹87 crore and a 16% rise in expenses due to finance and employee benefits expenses. On the other hand, revenue grew at a relatively slower rate of 6.6% to ₹797 crore ($11 million). Mirae Asset Blue Chip Fund and Kotak Emerging Equity Scheme were among shareholders at the end of December 2019. More brands of innerwear have entered India, and some more have grown here The branded innerwear segment in India has been growing, with the entry of new players like Zivame, Clovia, Pretty Secrets which sell under their own brand online. Added to that, the variety of options having considerably grown with e-commerce giants like Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra, Snapdeal have increased considerably. To keep up with rising competition, the company has had to invest more. “A temporary dip in PAT (profit after tax) is entirely due to enhanced investments in sales and marketing, people and technology, which will drive sustainable growth in the years to come,” said the company’s official statement. As on September 30t, 2018, <a href="https://www.jockeyindia.com/news/press-releases" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank">the Bengaluru-based company had over 20,000 employees</a>, spread over 15 manufacturing units in Bengaluru, Hassan, Mysore, Gowribidanur, Tiptur and Tirupur. Headwinds for underwear The Sunder Genomal family's— worth $1.9 billion according to Forbes— 26-year long dream run with Jockey is finally slowing down, along with the Indian economy. The share price has multiplied over nearly 90 times since the listing in 2007. Even in the last three years, since demonetisation, when the economy started to slow down the stock has gone 63.7%. However, you can neither write-off the promoters nor the brands they sell. Page Industries currenly sells to 130 million Indians but there is still a huge chunk of untapped market for branded players There is a big enough market for a lot of players but the sellers have to wait for the slowdown to end for the profit squeeze to ease. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/news/dabur-share-price-and-indian-billionaires-anand-burman-family-net-worth/articleshow/73988597.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank">Chyawanprash, and the government’s blessings, are helping Dabur make hay even when the sun don’t shine</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/hawkins-dishes-out-delicious-earnings-and-dividends-thanks-to-corporate-tax-cuts/articleshow/74000686.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank">Hawkins dishes out delicious earnings and dividends thanks to corporate tax cuts</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/irctc-stock-multiplied-over-5-times-in-4-months-making-the-indian-government-richer/articleshow/74114079.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink" target="_blank">This stock multiplied over 5 times in 4 months making the Indian government richer by $2 billion</a>

Biting slowdown is squeezing Page Industries' profit margin on Jockey and Speedo

<ul class="summary-list"><li>For centuries, watermelon has been used alongside negative imagery of Black Americans.</li><li>Watermelon was first seen as a demeaning symbol in the 19th century when freed Black Americans became merchants and sold the fruit.</li></ul>For centuries, Black Americans have had to endure painful watermelon stereotypes. That hasn't changed in recent years.In May 2022, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/photo-posted-online-6-florida-middle-schoolers-holding-letters-spell-s-rcna29806">NBC reported</a> that six Florida middle-schoolers posted a photo of themselves on social media holding up a letter to spell out a racial slur, sparking outrage in the community. One letter appeared to be shaped like a watermelon.In 2014 political cartoonist Jerry Holbert designed <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/politics/boston-herald-cartoon">a comic of then-President Barack Obama</a> using watermelon-flavored toothpaste for the Boston Herald.At the<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/11/20/daniel-handler-lemony-snicket-watermelon-joke-national-book-awards/70022100/"> National Book Awards in 2014</a>, author Daniel Handler — perhaps best known by his pseudonym Lemony Snicket — joked about Jacqueline Woodson's watermelon allergy after she won an award that night for her book "Brown Girl Dreaming." Handler quipped that he'd write about "a Black girl being allergic to watermelon," as long as he had consent from Black icons like Toni Morrison, Cornel West, and then-President Barack Obama. Woodson responded eloquently and emotively to the remark in her 2014 New York Times op-ed, "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/29/opinion/the-pain-of-the-watermelon-joke.html">The Pain of the Watermelon Joke</a>": "By making light of that deep and troubled history, [Handler] showed that he believed we were at a point where we could laugh about it all." Woodson wrote. "His historical context, unlike my own, came from a place of ignorance."<h2>The origins of watermelon</h2>Although stereotypes about the fruit are primarily associated with the American South and Black American culture, the fruit's vines <a href="https://lab.plant-humanities.org/watermelon/">stem all the way back</a> to the African continent. The origins of watermelon can be dated back approximately 6,000 years ago when it was domesticated throughout Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, and Kenya. Enjoyed by royalty like the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, watermelon soon made it to Rome and Greece, later becoming cultivated in Spain after the Arab conquest.Ancient Greeks praised watermelon for its <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalgeographic.com%2Fhistory%2Farticle%2F150821-watermelon-fruit-history-agriculture">healing and restorative properties</a>, and prescribed them to people as a diuretic and to children as treatment for heatstroke.<a href="https://ipm.missouri.edu/MEG/2020/7/watermelon-DT/">By the 7th century</a> watermelon had made its way to India, and by the 10th century, it could be found in China. It is thought that it wasn't until the late 16th century and early 17th century that watermelon was introduced to the Americas through European colonists and through the transatlantic slave trade from Africa. Thomas Jefferson's <a href="https://www.monticello.org/house-gardens/center-for-historic-plants/twinleaf-journal-online/african-american-gardens-at-monticello/">gardens at Monticello</a> were known to have grown the fruit.By the mid-to-late 19th century, watermelon began to become racialized. Around the time of the Civil War, negative descriptions about African American watermelon-eaters started becoming more prominent. According to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26381503?read-now=1&amp;seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents">researcher William R. Black</a>, enslaved people would sometimes negotiate informal contracts with their owners to cultivate and sell their own crops on designated plots of land on the plantations they worked on. As watermelons were easy to grow, they became a popular choice. Black quotes one former enslaved person as saying, "We never had our own gardens, but we had small watermelon patches."<h2>'A taste of freedom'</h2>Post-emancipation after the Civil War ended, newly freed African Americans continued to grow watermelons and sold them to generate income for themselves. "Newly emancipated Africans employed their farming and entrepreneur abilities to produce and sell items like watermelon and the like," Howard University Afro American Studies lecturer Dr. Jo Von McCalester told Insider. "Personal gardens and their ability to sell its goods after completing their obligations, fostered a taste of freedom driven by their own efforts and on their own terms."However, this new economic model upset some former slave owners in the South, who were angered that formerly subjugated African Americans had carved out a lucrative business niche for themselves and were enjoying the fruits of their labor."This air of freedom among those formerly enslaved further humiliated Southern whites," Dr. McCalester said. "The sheer audacity for Freed Africans to persevere in spite of their deplorable action, caused the concerted effort and sharp response of Southern whites to create a racist trope around the fruit and freed Africans."<h2>Smear campaigns</h2>Throughout the Jim Crow era, smear campaigns involving African Americans eating watermelon began to be spread, partially as a form of bigotry, but also as an attempt to squash African American businesses. Ads and ephemera used images of African Americans "stealing, fighting over, or sitting in streets eating watermelon," in an effort to "shame Black watermelon merchants," according to the <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/popular-and-pervasive-stereotypes-african-americans">National Museum of African American History and Culture</a>.Degrading African Americans by way of watermelon also acted as a ploy to derail Black people from gaining and sustaining positions of power."By associating the fruit with ideas like ignorance, uncleanliness, and laziness, refusing to accept their participation in society, politics, business, etc., is viewed as justified," Dr. McCalester said."Their consumption of watermelon was an outward expression of their inward inferiority."Movies like the 1915 film "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebtiJH3EOHo">The Birth of a Nation</a>" aided in cementing the watermelon stereotype with their "watermelon feast" scene. The film portrayed Black people being coaxed by white Northerners to quit working and eat watermelon after emancipation, implying that free Black people were going to be burdensome workers in America.In 1941, Universal Pictures released "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacUR7bPnMM">Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat</a>," an animated film that inhumanely distorted Blackness, reiterating racist notions that all Black people do is laze around and jig while over-indulging in watermelon in lieu of laboring.<div type="image" title="Harmful caricature illustrating the watermelon stereotype" height="461" width="615" msid="95493298" hostid="261" sizebytes="22152"></div><h2>Caricatures persist into the 20th century</h2><a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2008/may.htm">The Jim Crow museum</a> at Ferris State University holds countless memorabilia illustrating exaggerated and dehumanizing examples of the watermelon stereotype."The museum has dozens of three dimensional objects showing African Americans eating watermelons, including banks, ashtrays, toys, firecrackers, cookie jars, match holders, dolls, souvenirs, doorstops, lawn jockeys, and novelty objects," according to Ferris State University. "These objects not only show Blacks lustily eating watermelons but often portray African Americans in physically caricatured ways: hideous faces, over-sized bright red lips, darting eyes, and ragged clothing.""The stigma associated with dark skin, oversized smiles, and red lips eating watermelon, has caused so many to socialize younger generations to steer clear of the fruit, Dr. McCalester said. "The backlash and perception of being associated with the fruit can even be seen contemporarily, even if Black People don't fully understand the historic implications of consuming the fruit."

How the watermelon stereotype came to be weaponized against Black Americans

<ul class="summary-list"><li>At Business Insider Intelligence, our mission is to bring you the most important insights, data and analysis from the digital world. So when we come across outstanding research from our partners that we think our audience can benefit from, we like to make sure you hear about it. </li><li>That's why we're giving you a preview of one of eMarketer's most popular reports: <a href="https://store.businessinsider.com/products/the-sports-ott-landscape-collection?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=content_marketing&amp;itm_campaign=report_teaser&amp;itm_content=top_text&amp;itm_term=store_text_link-sports-ott-landscape-2019-report-emarketer&amp;vertical=emarketer#!/">Sports OTT Landscape 2019.</a></li><li><a href="https://store.businessinsider.com/products/the-sports-ott-landscape-collection?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=content_marketing&amp;itm_campaign=report_teaser&amp;itm_content=top_text&amp;itm_term=store_text_link-sports-ott-landscape-2019-report-emarketer&amp;vertical=emarketer#!/">You can purchase and download the full report here.</a></li></ul>Preferences for specific sports can differ vastly throughout the world. UK viewers get their kicks from watching intense games of rugby, hockey dominates in Canadian culture, and cricket remains a hit in India.However, one constant can be guaranteed: the fervent enthusiasm of sports fans everywhere who are hungry for anywhere, anytime access to the games of their choice.GettyViewers around the globe will continue to keep their eyes glued on sports footage for hours at a time on their favorite devices, which serves as a unifying agent among those of varying backgrounds. This will also translate into sticky marketing tactics, as adept marketers make a play to win over an already captivated audience.eMarketer has put together the report Sports OTT Landscape 2019 that offers insight into the future of sports viewership in ten countries - Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, United Kingdom, South Korea, Mexico, and the United States, as well as the global implications of these trends.Some highlights include:<ul><li>At this stage in the game, TV broadcasting remains the MVP in global sports viewership. This is especially true in more developed countries like the United States, where fans are keen on watching their favorite competitors duke it out on the largest available screen.</li><li>In countries like Brazil that are experiencing an economic slump, more OTT services will step up to the plate, offering affordable viewing options to hit on both viewers' financial restraints and broadcasters' concerns about piracy.</li><li>Pay TV is still more affordable in certain countries like Mexico where streaming rights are controlled by powerful broadcasters. However, sports streaming will become increasingly important as contracts between owners and distributors come up for renewal.</li><li>New players like Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, and independent services like DAZN, are jockeying for a position in the digital sports arena, offering a potential game changer for those already regularly interacting on both of these mediums.</li></ul><a href="https://store.businessinsider.com/products/the-sports-ott-landscape-collection?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=content_marketing&amp;itm_campaign=report_teaser&amp;itm_content=full_report_text&amp;itm_term=store_text_link-sports-ott-landscape-2019-report-emarketer&amp;vertical=emarketer#!/">Interested in getting the full report? Purchase &amp; download it from our research store.</a>

Learn which countries will hit it out of the park in the OTT sports arena

<ul><li>The video of Welspun India’s CEO Dipali Goenka dancing with her colleagues, to the tune of Muqabla song from the Street Dancer 3D, has gone viral on the internet </li><li>The 50-year old Joint Managing Director and CEO of the ₹4,500-crore (over $600 million) Welspun India. </li><li>This is just one party on the road to the targeted $2 billion in revenue by 2022</li></ul>The video of Welspun India’s CEO Dipali Goenka dancing with her colleagues, to the tune of Muqabla song from the Street Dancer 3D, has gone viral on the internet. Many industry leaders,<a href="https://twitter.com/Varun_dvn/status/1230035375734784001"> bollywood actors</a> and politicians applauded the 45-sec video giving a glimpse at a ‘happy workplace’. But the 50-year old Joint Managing Director and CEO of the ₹4,500-crore (over $600 million) Welspun India has a lot more to her credit than a viral video. 
	
	<div type="twitter" handle="hvgoenka" handlename="Harsh Goenka" image="http://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1100471315016732672/VQXLpkHZ_normal.jpg" favoritecount="13586" retweetcount="2226" status="Rare to see a CEO dance and have fun in an office setting. That’s the way to create a happy culture @DipaliGoenka… https://t.co/DHDlNz8Gy9" createdat="1582045195000" id="1229812801889357824"></div>





 The reason for the celebration: Welspun India, which makes towels, bathrobes, and bedsheet, registered a whopping 55% growth in net profit for the third quarter ending on December 31, 2019, sparking hopes of a turnaround amidst gloomy prospects for the entire sector. This is just one party on the road to the targeted $2 billion in revenue by 2022. Goenka had a tough start as the boss 
 
 <div type="image" title="BCBE8AC1-8420-48A1-A8D7-E84E24DD23EC" msid="74211911" hostid="261"></div> Goenka was a homemaker, and the wife of <keyword id="949657" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Balkrishan-Goenka">Balkrishan Goenka</keyword> (the Chairman of the <keyword id="157753" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Welspun-Group">Welspun Group</keyword>) until she decided to become an executive back in 2002. She became an entrepreneur with a new business line, Spaces, a brand that targets premium for towels and bedsheets at a domestic level. Nine years ago, in 2011, Goenka shook the textile industry in India when she took charge of the company. Some industry leaders thought the “Welspun has lost its mind” <a href="https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/business-wire/forbes-ranks-dipali-goenka-as-the-16th-most-powerful-businesswoman-in-asia/article8446854.ece">reported Forbes</a>. ‘Is she here because she is a part of the management?” <a href="https://wow.outlookbusiness.com/dipali-goenka/">Goenka told the media</a>. Two years later, she became the joint managing director in 2013. A few years into the business, Goenka proved the skeptics wrong. Welspun India’s annual revenue was nearly ₹5,500 crore last year. In fact, a look at the stock price of Welspun India shows that the real wealth generation for investors happened only after she took over. 
 
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Source: Google Finance Now, the company expects the WelHome and Spaces brands to touch ₹3,500 crore, according to an Edelweiss report, by next year whereas the current market value of entire Welspun India is just ₹4,500 crore. What makes her achievement special is that she has managed to grow the company at a time when the textile industry has been struggling to survive. Particularly, the textile exporters from India have been losing out <a href="https://scroll.in/article/810671/three-charts-show-how-indian-textile-industry-lost-the-race-to-bangladesh-and-vietnam">cheaper competition from Bangladesh and Vietnam</a>. The early setback Sexism was not the only challenge for Goenka. One of the biggest setbacks for the group was in 2016, when Target Corp, second largest value retailer in the US, informed their customers that Welspun India sold them substandard bedsheets. 
 
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 At the time, Target gave about 10% of Welspun India’s billion-dollar revenue every year. Their market cap took a steep fall of 54% — from ₹103.34 billion to ₹46.97 billion between August 19, 2016 and August 30, 2016. Goenka <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/cons-products/garments-/-textiles/how-welspun-india-is-emerging-from-a-crisis-that-rocked-its-credibility/articleshow/69706022.cms">took responsibility and met all her customers </a>including JCPenney, Costco, <keyword id="80487" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="walmart">Walmart</keyword> in the US to Sainsbury in Europe. In 2017-18, the company’s gross sales fell by 9%. But the company seems to have recovered from that now. It was ranked as the <a href="http://outlookindia.com/outlookmoney/investment/the-weaver-welspun-india-2122">top home textile suppliers in the US in 2017 </a>and has a distribution network in over 32 countries including US, UK, Europe, Canada and Australia. The good fight Goenka has not only chased her corporate aspirations, she has also strongly backed gender equality. “The biggest change is that the percentage of women has gone up from 7% to 23% in our workforce. IQ is not the only thing that will take an organisation forward. It is also the EQ. And that’s the balance women bring,” Goenka<a href="https://wow.outlookbusiness.com/dipali-goenka/"> told Outlook Business. </a> While prodding other billionaire-owners of big businesses like <keyword id="46425" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Anand-Mahindra">Anand Mahindra</keyword>, <keyword id="55796" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Kiran-Mazumdar-Shaw">Kiran Mazumdar Shaw</keyword> and <keyword id="111343" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Gautam-Adani">Gautam Adani</keyword> to make their workplace more fun, Goenka has also become the face of a changing corporate culture in India. SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/article/escorts-share-price-and-inside-story-of-how-market-value-nearly-doubled-in-a-new-book/articleshow/73763872.cms">The inside story of how Escorts turned around to become a nearly ₹10,000-crore company</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/corporates/news/profit-margin-on-jockey-and-speedo-shrinks-shows-page-industries-q3-earnings/articleshow/74119148.cms">Biting slowdown is squeezing Page Industries' profit margin on Jockey and Speedo</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/manish-malhotra-ritu-kumar-sabyasachi-and-other-top-designer-clothes-are-available-for-rent-thanks-to-this-indian-startup/articleshow/72326885.cms">Manish Malhotra, Ritu Kumar, Sabyasachi and other top designer clothes are available for rent thanks to this Indian startup</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/everybody-needs-a-haircut-says-celebrity-stylist-jawed-habib-who-does-not-fear-the-effect-of-a-slowdown/articleshow/74132791.cms">Star hair stylist Jawed Habib reveals why $30 million franchise hasn't cut prices this slowdown</a>

Welspun CEO Dipali Goenka is more than a dancing CEO⁠— she’s a homemaker-turned-CEO engaged in the good fight

<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">REUTERS/Aung Hla Tun A <keyword id="16488" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Jade">jade</keyword> merchant inspects the most valuable jade lot that will be auctioned at the Mid-Year Emporium in Yangon November 13, 2007.</div></div>
HPAKANT, Myanmar (Reuters) - Tin Tun picked all night through teetering heaps of rubble to find the palm-sized lump of jade he now holds in his hand. He hopes it will make him a fortune. It's happened before.
"Last year I found a stone worth 50 million kyat," he said, trekking past the craters and slag heaps of this notorious jade-mining region in northwest Myanmar. That's about $50,000 - and it was more than enough money for Tin Tun, 38, to buy land and build a house in his home village.
But rare finds by small-time prospectors like Tin Tun pale next to the staggering wealth extracted on an industrial scale by Myanmar's military, the tycoons it helped enrich, and companies linked to the country where most jade ends up: China.
Almost half of all jade sales are "unofficial" - that is, spirited over the border into China with little or no formal taxation. This represents billions of dollars in lost revenues that could be spent on rebuilding a nation shattered by nearly half a century of military dictatorship.
Official statistics confirm these missing billions. Myanmar produced more than 43 million kg of jade in fiscal year 2011/12 (April to March). Even valued at a conservative $100 per kg, it was worth $4.3 billion. But official exports of jade that year stood at only $34 million.
Official Chinese statistics only deepen the mystery. China doesn't publicly report how much jade it imports from Myanmar. But jade is included in official imports of precious stones and metals, which in 2012 were worth $293 million - a figure still too small to explain where billions of dollars of Myanmar jade has gone.
Such squandered wealth symbolizes a wider challenge in Myanmar, an impoverished country whose natural resources - including oil, timber and precious metals - have long fueled armed conflicts while enriching only powerful individuals or groups. In a rare visit to the heart of Myanmar's secretive jade-mining industry in Hpakant, Reuters found an anarchic region where soldiers and ethnic rebels clash, and where mainland Chinese traders rub shoulders with heroin-fueled "handpickers" who are routinely buried alive while scavenging for stones.
Myint Aung, Myanmar's Minister of Mines, did not reply to written questions from Reuters about the jade industry's missing millions and social costs.
Since a reformist government took office in March 2011, Myanmar has pinned its economic hopes on the resumption of foreign aid and investment. Some economists argue, however, that Myanmar's prosperity and unity may depend upon claiming more revenue from raw materials.
There are few reliable estimates on total jade sales that include unofficial exports. The Harvard Ash Center, which advises Myanmar's quasi-civilian government, has possibly the best numbers available.
After sending researchers to the area this year, the Harvard Ash Center published a report in July that put sales of Burmese jade at about $8 billion in 2011. That's more than double the country's revenue from natural gas and nearly a sixth of its 2011 GDP.
"Practically nothing is going to the government," David Dapice, the report's co-author, told Reuters. "What you need is a modern system of public finance in which the government collects some part of the rents from mining this stuff."
<h3>HIDING STONES</h3>
Chinese have prized jade for its beauty and symbolism for millennia. Many believe wearing jade jewelry brings good fortune, prosperity and longevity. It is also viewed as an investment, a major factor driving China's appetite for Burmese jade. "Gold is valuable, but jade is priceless," runs an old Chinese saying.
Jade is not only high value but easy to transport. "Only the stones they cannot hide go to the emporiums," said Tin Soe, 53, a jade trader in Hpakant, referring to the official auctions held in Myanmar's capital of Naypyitaw.
The rest is smuggled by truck to China by so-called "jockeys" through territory belonging to either the Burmese military or the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), both of whom extract tolls. The All China Jade Trade Association, a state-linked industry group based in Beijing, declined repeated requests for an interview.
Hpakant lies in Kachin State, a rugged region sandwiched strategically between China and India. Nowhere on Earth does jade exist in such quantity and quality. "Open the ground, let the country abound," reads the sign outside the Hpakant offices of the Ministry of Mines.
In fact, few places better symbolize how little Myanmar benefits from its fabulous natural wealth. The road to Hpakant has pot-holes bigger than the four-wheel-drive cars that negotiate it. During the rainy season, it can take nine hours to reach from Myitkyina, the Kachin state capital 110 km (68 miles) away.
Non-Burmese are rarely granted official access to Hpakant, but taxi-drivers routinely take Chinese traders there for exorbitant fees, part of which goes to dispensing bribes at police and military checkpoints. The official reason for restricting access to Hpakant is security: the Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have long vied for control of the road, which is said to be flanked with land-mines. But the restrictions also serve to reduce scrutiny of the industry's biggest players and its horrific social costs: the mass deaths of workers and some of the highest heroin addiction and HIV infection rates in Myanmar.
There are also "obvious" links between jade and conflict in Kachin State, said analyst Richard Horsey, a former United Nations senior official in Myanmar. A 17-year ceasefire between the military and the KIA ended when fighting erupted in June 2011. It has since displaced at least 100,000 people.
"Such vast revenues - in the hands of both sides - have certainly fed into the conflict, helped fund insurgency, and will be a hugely complicating factor in building a sustainable peace economy," Horsey said.
The United States banned imports of jade, rubies and other Burmese gemstones in 2008 in a bid to cut off revenue to the military junta which then ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma. But soaring demand from neighboring China meant the ban had little effect. After Myanmar's reformist government took power, the United States scrapped or suspended almost all economic and political sanctions - but not the ban on jade and rubies. It was renewed by the White House on August 7 in a sign that Myanmar's anarchic jade industry remains a throwback to an era of dictatorship. The U.S. Department of the Treasury included the industry in activities that "contribute to human rights abuses or undermine Burma's democratic reform process."
Foreign companies are not permitted to extract jade. But mining is capital intensive, and it is an open secret that most of the 20 or so largest operations in Hpakant are owned by Chinese companies or their proxies, say gem traders and other industry insiders in Kachin State. "Of course, some (profit) goes to the government," said Yup Zaw Hkawng, chairman of Jadeland Myanmar, the most prominent Kachin mining company in Hpakant. "But mostly it goes into the pockets of Chinese families and the families of the former (Burmese) government."
Other players include the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (UMEHL), the investment arm of the country's much-feared military, and Burmese tycoons such as Zaw Zaw, chairman of Max Myanmar, who made their fortunes collaborating with the former junta.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image">REUTERS/Minzayar Hand-pickers search for jade through rubble dumped by mining companies at a jade mine in Hpakant township, Kachin State July 8, 2013.</div></div>
<h3>THE CHINA CONNECTION</h3>
Soldiers guard the big mining companies and sometimes shoot in the air to scare off small-time prospectors. "We run like crazy when we see them," said Tin Tun, the handpicker.
UMEHL is notoriously tight-lipped about its operations. "Stop bothering us," Major Myint Oo, chief of human resources at UMEHL's head office in downtown Yangon, told Reuters. "You can't just come in here and meet our superiors. This is a military company. Some matters must be kept secret."
This arrangement, whereby Chinese companies exploit natural resources with military help, is both familiar and deeply controversial in Myanmar.
Last year, protests outside the Letpadaung copper mine in northwest Myanmar triggered a violent police crackdown. The mine's two operators - UMEHL and Myanmar Wanbao, a unit of Chinese weapons manufacturer China North Industries Corp - shared most of the profits, leaving the government with just 4 percent. That contract was revised in July in an apparent attempt to appease public anger. The government now gets 51 percent of the profits, while UMEHL and Myanmar Wanbao get 30 and 19 percent respectively.
China's domination of the jade trade could feed into a wider resentment over its exploitation of Myanmar's natural wealth. A Chinese-led plan to build a $3.6 million dam at the Irrawaddy River's source in Kachin State - and send most of the power it generated to Yunnan Province - was suspended in 2011 by President Thein Sein amid popular outrage.
The national and local governments should also get a greater share of Kachin State's natural wealth, say analysts and activists. That includes gold, timber and hydropower, but especially jade.
A two-week auction held in the capital Naypyitaw in June sold a record-breaking $2.6 billion in jade and gems. But jade tax revenue in 2011 amounted to only 20 percent of the official sales. Add in all the "unofficial" sales outside of the emporium, and Harvard calculates an effective tax rate of about 7 percent on all Burmese jade.
It is, on the other hand, highly lucrative for the mining companies, whose estimated cost of production is $400 a ton, compared with an official sales figure of $126,000 a ton, the report said.
"Kachin, and by extension Myanmar, cannot be peaceful and politically stable without some equitable sharing of resource revenues with the local people," said analyst Horsey.
<h3>THE PECKING ORDER</h3>
At the top of the pecking order in Hpakant are cashed-up traders from China, who buy stones displayed on so-called "jade tables" in Hpakant tea-shops. The tables are run by middleman called laoban ("boss" in Chinese), who are often ethnic Chinese. They buy jade from, and sometimes employ, handpickers like Tin Tun.
The handpickers are at the bottom of the heap - literally. They swarm in their hundreds across mountains of rubble dumped by the mining companies. It is perilous work, especially when banks and slag heaps are destabilized by monsoon rain. Landslides routinely swallow 10 or 20 men at a time, said Too Aung, 30, a handpicker from the Kachin town of Bhamo.
"Sometimes we can't even dig out their bodies," he said. "We don't know where to look."
In 2002, at least a thousand people were killed when flood waters inundated a mine, Jadeland Myanmar chairman Yup Zaw Hkawng told Reuters. Deaths are common but routinely concealed by companies eager to avoid suspending operations, he said.
The boom in Hpakant's population coincided with an exponential rise in opium production in Myanmar, the world's second-largest producer after Afghanistan. Its derivative, heroin, is cheap and widely available in Kachin State, and Hpakant's workforce seems to run on it.
About half the handpickers use heroin, while others rely on opium or alcohol, said Tin Soe, 53, a jade trader and a local leader of the opposition National League for Democracy party. "It's very rare to find someone who doesn't do any of these," he said.
Official figures on heroin use in Hpakant are hard to get. The few foreign aid workers operating in the area, mostly working with drug users, declined comment for fear of upsetting relations with the Myanmar government. But health workers say privately about 40 percent of injecting drug users in Hpakant are HIV positive - twice the national average.
Drug use is so intrinsic to jade mining that "shooting galleries" operate openly in Hpakant, with workers often exchanging lumps of jade for hits of heroin.
Soe Moe, 39, came to Hpakant in 1992. Three years later, he was sniffing heroin, then injecting it. His habit now devours his earnings as a handpicker. "When I'm on (heroin), I feel happier and more energetic. I work better," he said. The shooting gallery he frequents accommodates hundreds of users. "The place is so busy it's like a festival," he said. Soe Moe said he didn't fear arrest, because the gallery owners paid off the police.
<h3>MOVING MOUNTAINS</h3>
Twenty years ago, Hpakant was controlled by KIA insurgents who for a modest fee granted access to small prospectors. Four people with iron picks could live off the jade harvested from a small plot of land, said Yitnang Ze Lum of the Myanmar Gems and Jewellery Entrepreneurs Association (MGJEA) in Myitkyina.
A 1994 ceasefire brought most of Hpakant back under government control, and large-scale extraction began, with hundreds of backhoes, earthmovers and trucks working around the clock. "Now even a mountain lasts only three months," said Yitnang Ze Lum.
Many Kachin businessmen, unable to compete in terms of capital or technology, were shut out of the industry. Non-Kachin workers poured in from across Myanmar, looking for jobs and hoping to strike it rich.
The mines were closed in mid-2012 when the conflict flared up again. Myanmar's military shelled suspected KIA positions; the rebels retaliated with ambushes along the Hpakant road. Thousands of people were displaced.Jade production plunged to just 19.08 million kg in the 2012/13 fiscal year from 43.1 million kg the previous year. But the government forged a preliminary ceasefire with the Kachin rebels in May, and some traders predict Hpakant's mines will re-open when the monsoon ends in October.
When operations are in full swing, the road to Hpakant is clogged with vehicles bringing fuel in and jade out. Such is the scale and speed of modern extraction, said Yitnang Ze Lum, Hpakant's jade could be gone within 10 years.
"Every Kachin feels passionately that their state's resources are being taken away," a leading Myitkyina gem trader told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "But we're powerless to stop them."
(Andrew R.C. Marshall reported from Myitkyina; Min Zayar Oo reported from Hpakant; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing <a></a>

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