Record rainfall of 944mm on Tuesday, in less than 24 hours, has flooded Mumbai- India's financial capital and brought normal life and business to a standstill. A 2 day state holiday was declared on Wednesday and Thursday as the city grappled to limp back to normalcy. The wrath of the rains spread in all coastal areas in the state of Maharashtra, seriously affecting manufacturing plants in this belt. Many units in industrial belts like Patalganga, Belapur and Thane are still reeling under the impact of the worst rains in a century. The impact was felt right from the Stock Exchange (BSE and the NSE) and banks that remained closed on Thursday, cancelled board meetings to a total standstill for movement of goods either for the market in West India or for exports through the Mumbai port.
Initial estimates put losses at around thousands of crores as damages due to flooding and another thousand crores of losses due to the disruption in business. Insurable portion of the entire loss is still not known. The largest of the claims is expected from Reliance Industries, the country's biggest petrochemicals maker which has already announced that it had shut its facility at Patalganga. The Patalganaga plant is a part of the RIL assets which, along with other assets at Jamnagar and Hazira, has insurance covers for a sum assured estimated at over Rs 60,000 crore.
29-Jul-05 
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