The Indonesian Filament Fiber and Yarn Association (APSyFI) responded to the Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) which said the investment trend for labor-intensive industries in 2022 would increase followed by employment. APSyFI Chairperson, Redma Gita Wiraswasta, said that the increase in investment was not followed by job opportunities. "Investment is indeed year on year (yoy) will definitely increase. Last year, those were the driving results for the first and second quarters because there was positive sentiment in the fourth quarter of 2021 that the investment climate was improving despite COVID-19," said Redma, Tuesday (10/1).

"But then expectations immediately changed after the war, which caused global energy to drag and fuel prices to rise, so investors did not return their investment. Equally important, exports were sluggish and stalled a lot last year," he added.

Redma said that most of the investment that came in was channeled only to add factory machines, not to build a new factory. So the number of jobs is fixed.

In addition, Redma feels that the increase in fuel prices has also led to high freight costs. The significant price increase also suppressed demand for several domestic and export industrial commodities.

"Freight costs become expensive at the end of the year. Initially normal in the third quarter, but the price peaked in the fourth quarter. The combination of fuel (price) hikes, price inflation, and natural disasters has increased costs by 20 to 33 percent," said Redma.

Labor-intensive industries are identified in the sub-sectors of the apparel industry, textile industry, tobacco processing industry, furniture industry, leather industry, leather goods and footwear, food industry, and beverage industry.

"Judging from the trend in investment value, most of the labor-intensive industries will experience an increase in 2022. This increase is especially evident when seen starting from two years before the pandemic (2018)," said the Director of Industrial Resilience and Business Climate at the Ministry of Industry, Binoni Tio A. Napitupulu, Monday (9/1).