The Minister of Cooperatives and SMEs Teten Masduki firmly refused to buy and sell imported used clothes or commonly known as thrifting. This rejection step is a way to protect the textile industry, MSME players. "We want to protect our MSME products, especially in the textile and shoe textile product sectors," explained Teten Masduki, Monday (13/3/2023). According to him, currently textile and shoe products produced by national MSME actors are already scattered which are able to compete. The import of used and illegal textile products is not in line with the Government's efforts to encourage consumption of local products through the Proud Made in Indonesia National Movement.
"In my opinion, the smuggling of used goods, including textile products, is very inconsistent with the Proud Made in Indonesia movement, whose goal is to invite people to love consuming the nation's own creations and what is traded is also illegal," he said.
Through the BBI National Movement, he continued, the government has a policy to spend 40 percent of MSME products in the procurement of goods. From this policy alone, BPS predicts that there will be a national economic growth of 1.85 percent and create two million jobs without new investment.
If household consumption does the same thing, he is sure that national economic growth will increase. Apart from not being in line with the movement to love domestic products, the trend of thrifting imports, he said, would also erode jobs because the textile industry is a labor-intensive industry that involves many workers.
Teten even asked customs to be more stringent in increasing supervision regarding the entry of imported used illegal clothing which has been banned in accordance with Minister of Trade Regulation Number 40 of 2022 concerning Amendments to Minister of Trade Regulation Number 18 of 2021 concerning Export Prohibited Goods and Import Prohibited Goods.
"Actually it's not difficult because we have investigated it, apart from through social media (social media), there are in Pasar Senen, Gedebage and Pasar Baru. From there, it's easier to identify who the importers are," he said.
