The textile and textile products industry assesses the difficulty in obtaining market guarantees at this time.

Secretary General of the Indonesian Fiber and Filament Yarn Producers Association (APSyFI) Redma Gita Wirawasta even said that the government had failed to make the domestic market a guarantee for the local product market. Meanwhile, it easily provides a red carpet for imported products in the name of providing cheap goods for consumers without thinking about efforts to increase the purchasing power of consumers themselves.

Redma said that APSyFI's analysis of the textile industry growth data sourced from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) illustrates that the effect of investment on TPT GDP in the last 5 years has continued to decline to the remaining 2.4 percent in 2019 and 2020. Meanwhile, the trade balance has also continued to decline until only 24 percent of TPT GDP.

"If the condition is maintained like this, in the next 5 years our trade balance will only have US $ 1 billion left and our growth will always be negative, whereas before 2008 our balance could be above US $ 7 billion but it will continue to be eroded due to the pro-import policy," he said.

Redma said that this pro-import policy had suppressed investment and the ability to absorb labor in the textile sector. The government has issued many fiscal incentive policies such as tax holidays, tax allowances and so on to encourage investment, but this is considered to be in vain due to market guarantee issues.

The low utilization of production due to the continued erosion of the domestic market for imported goods and low investment has also caused labor absorption in the textile sector to be minimal and reducing its function as a labor-intensive sector.

“We should immediately realize that the flood of cheap imported goods has been eating away at our economy for years. So please reverse the thought, if cheap goods are available from imports but unemployment is still not resolved, do consumers have purchasing power? " said Redma.

Then Redma touched on the issue of apparel safeguards which has been hampered in its implementation where several parties in several ministries did not agree on the grounds of inflation fears.

According to him, imports are only played by a handful of people, but if it is produced locally, thousands of small and medium industries (IKM) are involved with millions of workers, hundreds of fabric industries with hundreds of thousands of workers are involved, hundreds of yarn industries with hundreds of thousands of employees are also involved, until fiber producers and their employees are also involved.

"Not to mention the series of VAT from upstream to downstream and PPH for companies or their employees from upstream to downstream. So, the government wants to select a group of importers or millions of workers and a market stimulus for investment? " he concluded.