The textile and textile product (TPT) industry is still sluggish in early 2023. This has made many apparel or garment factories lay off their employees. One of the latest is the collapse of the clothing supply factory for the Puma brand, PT Tuntex Garment Indonesia. The company laid off 1,163 workers. Spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) Febri Hendri Antoni Arif revealed several reasons for the large number of layoffs carried out in garment factories. One of them is due to the declining export market.

"Based on our IKI, the industry confidence index, the apparel or garment sector or the apparel sub-sector are still contracting or the IKI index value is below 50," Wednesday (5/4/2023).

"Because most of the apparel sub-sector is exported and indeed the apparel export market, especially in Europe and America, is declining because households there are still prioritizing spending or spending on other things," he continued.

This, said Febri, has reduced demand for apparel products produced by the national garment industry.

Febri himself doesn't know when the garment industry will be able to revive again. This is because it depends on market demand. This is because 30% of the TPT industry is for export and 70% is sold domestically.

In the same vein, Nurdin Setiawan, Deputy Chairperson for Labor and HR Development at the Indonesian Textile Association (API) BPP, revealed that the reason for the decline in demand for the garment industry was triggered by several things, one of which was the global economic slowdown.

"This (decrease) has occurred since the beginning of 2022, now it is actually still a series from 2022 to semester 1 2023. Since the second, third, fourth quarters of 2022, orders have started to decrease due to the impact of the global economic slowdown, as a result of the global economic recession, geopolitics, then added there is stagflation," he said.

According to him, the biggest impact arising from the decline in market demand will be felt by export-oriented labor-intensive companies.

"Because if the TPT sector is from upstream to downstream, those with a lot of layoffs are downstream because of labor-intensive companies. If upstream it's more capital-intensive, they're also affected, but in terms of the number of employees it's not as big as in the downstream, like in the garment industry. ," he said.

He revealed, in 2022, the export-oriented TPT industry would be disrupted. There is an average decrease in demand by 30-50%.

"Exports to destination countries, where these countries were hit by an economic recession, such as in the US, Latin America, Europe, contributed nearly 50% of the market, textile products for export, especially in apparel," he explained.