The Ministry of Industry will coordinate with the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Wild Affairs to overcome the current excess production of personal protective equipment (PPE) and masks in the country. Director of the Textile, Leather and Footwear Industry of the Ministry of Industry, Elis Masitoh, said that if the overseas market is open for PPE and mask products, this opportunity will be welcomed by the domestic industry, which in fact has a large enough capacity while demand is limited.
"So the industry will definitely welcome it. Even now, many industries already have a large stock of PPE and masks, but of course the obstacle now is how these buyers can connect with our industries," he said.
Elis said that currently according to the Medical Device Monitoring Dashboard (DMA), the national production capacity for PPE coverall reaches 39.6 million per month. On the other hand, as of December 2020, production had reached 356.4 million with a need for only 14.8 million, meaning that 341.1 million products were unemployed.
In addition to medical coveralls, there are also medical grade gowns, which each month the domestic industry is able to produce 24.9 million. However, as of December there was still a difference of 216.9 million unauthorized products.
Likewise for surgical masks, which production per month has now reached 405.8 million with a difference of 3.4 billion unemployed masks.
Meanwhile, production shortages still occur for the N95 mask type where production per month can only reach 360,000 per month. This is in line with the raw materials for spunbond and metblown in the country, which currently can only produce 250 tons per month, even though the need until December 2020 has reached 10.8 million.
Elis said a number of efforts by the Ministry of Industry have also been made, for example by facilitating business matching between producers and consumers, including health facilities and local governments.
"For the export market, we will coordinate with the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to participate in promoting the production of this medical equipment. We also have a market place with a B2B concept, which is currently still under the name Indonesia Smart Textile Industry Hub or ISTIH in which there are medical equipment manufacturers, "said Elis.
Previously, the Director General of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Trade, Didi Sumedi, said that the potential for exports of Indonesian medical devices in 2021 could reach US $ 4.54 billion, equivalent to Rp.63.4 trillion. This potential comes from a surplus of domestic industrial production.
"With a production surplus and an assumption of a coverall PPE price of US $ 9.25 per piece, US $ 2.85 per piece of different clothing and US $ 0.22 per piece of different masks, the export potential will reach US $ 4.54 billion," said Didi.
Each of these potentials comes from PPE coverall with a value of US $ 3.16 billion, surgical clothing of US $ 618.03 million, and surgical masks of around US $ 764.79 million. This export value is quite large considering that the export realization in 2020 is still far from the existing potential.
Quoting data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the export value of medical protective clothing (PPE coverall) last year only reached US $ 2.47 million, while surgical clothing was valued at US $ 20.29 million.
The export value of masks in the same year was US $ 75.19 million for surgical masks and US $ 74.09 million for masks made of nonwoven materials.
