Small and medium textile industries (IKM) experienced improvements in the utility of production capacity with orders starting to flood. But unfortunately, this is not accompanied by the availability of adequate workers. Understandably, in 2020 the home convection industry will close up to 40 percent. Nandi Herdiaman, General Chairperson of the Bandung Convection Entrepreneurs Association (IPKB) explained that despite the abundance of orders, the high increase in production costs caused the craftsmen's margins to be thin which resulted in the low ability to pay workers. Due to the low salary, it is difficult for textile SMEs to recruit human resources.
"So now the PR is looking for human resources, because there is less interest in being a tailor, the wages are minimal," said Nandi, Tuesday (8/3/2022).
He continued, to reduce distribution costs, he encouraged SMEs to directly sell their products online while demand from the wholesale market had not fully recovered.
Meanwhile, the improvement in demand has begun to be felt by IKM actors since the implementation of garment safeguards since last year. Previously, the government has also issued a fabric safeguard since 2020. The protection instrument is recognized to support the recovery of the domestic textile industry.
On the other hand, the baby clothes entrepreneur feels the opposite. Roedy Irawan, General Chairperson of the Association of Baby Clothing and Equipment Entrepreneurs (P4B) said that imported products are still flooding the domestic market even though there are safeguards in place. This also causes baby clothing manufacturers to still stumble with demand that has not moved from a weak point.
It is suspected that imported products are still rampant in this segment because in terms of volume, baby clothes are more concise than adult clothes. Thus, the number of units transported in one shipment is much larger and can still cover the high container costs and import duties imposed.
Roedy hopes that the discussion on the Indonesia-Bangladesh Preferential Trade Agreement (IB-PTA) will also take into account the sustainability of textile SMEs, which are still recovering.
"Indonesia is the largest market for textile sales. The number of baby births in Indonesia is 5-6 million per year. That's a big market that the government must protect," he said.
