Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: Walmart is importing more goods to the United States from India and reducing its reliance upon China as it looks to cut costs and diversify its supply chain, data seen by Reuters shows.
The world’s largest retailer shipped one quarter of its US imports from India between January and August this year, according to bill of lading figures shared with Reuters by data firm Import Yeti. That compared with just 2% in 2018.
Only 60% of its shipments came from China during the same period, down from 80% in 2018, the same data shows. To be sure, China is still Walmart’s biggest country for importing goods.
The shift illustrates how the rising cost of importing from China and escalating political tensions between Washington and Beijing are encouraging large U.S. companies to import more from countries including India, Thailand and Vietnam.
“We want the best prices,” Andrea Albright, Walmart’s executive vice president of sourcing said in an interview. “That means I need resiliency in our supply chains. I can’t be reliant on any one supplier or geography for my product because we’re constantly managing things from hurricanes and earthquakes to shortages in raw materials.”
In a statement, Walmart said the bill of lading data painted a partial picture of what it sourced and that creating redundancy ‘does not necessarily mean’ it was reducing reliance on any of its sourcing markets. “We’re a growth business and are working to source more manufacturing capacity,” Walmart said.
