The Ministry of Industry (Kemenperin) claims that the downstream industry in the textile and textile products (TPT) sector or the apparel industry has explored the expansion phase. Even though the textile industry as a whole is not yet at a normal level. Director of the Textile, Leather and Footwear Industry of the Ministry of Industry Adie Rochmanto Pandiangan said the downstream sector expansion was due to an increase in clothing exports in volume of 32.5 million tonnes in May 2023. "The export figure increased sharply by 50 percent, compared to April which reached 21.9 million tonnes," said Adie in a virtual press conference on Tuesday (27/6/2023).
In terms of value, Adie said that the export of apparel rose 45.92 percent to US$700.7 million in May, from US$480.2 million the previous month.
Despite entering an expansive phase in the downstream sector, the textile industry as a whole is still experiencing contraction. It even includes being one of the three manufacturing sub-sectors that experienced a contraction in the June 2023 industrial confidence index (IKI) score.
Adie said this was still closely related to the decline in demand for the export market, especially to the United States and Europe as well as the domestic market which was still unreliable.
Previously, textile business actors admitted that they were having trouble maintaining the domestic market due to the heavy import of textiles, especially from China.
The Indonesian Textile Association (API) said that the loss of the domestic market for industry players was a series of problems following the lack of orders from export destination markets.
API Chairman Jemmy Kartiwa Sastraatmadja said this situation had been seen since the fourth quarter of 2022, then got worse in the following quarter. In fact, according to him, this situation has caused the utilization of the textile industry from upstream to downstream to below 50 percent.
"Starting from the first quarter of 2023 from upstream to downstream the utility is below 50 percent, this is already very bad. However, the initial signs are already from the fourth quarter of 2022," said Jemmy, Jakarta, Wednesday (21/6/2023)
