Textile Export Directed Toward Emerging Market

National textile business are constantly performing diversification of export market by targeting non-traditional countries which are growing rapidly. Redma Gita Wirawasta, executive director of indotextiles-national textiles research institute-said that currently there is a shift of market, which is not concentrated in some main export destination countries, but starts to move to the emerging market.

 Some main export market like the United States, European Union, and Japan are still the largest export destinations for textile products. But currently, there are already some new potential markets. Textile market, which was once dominated by the United States, Japan and Germany, has shifted to China, Turkey, Brazil, and Italy. So, to increase value of textile export in 2011, the government should boost Indonesian textiles to enter emerging market countries in ASEAN, Middle East, and Latin America. “if we wish our export to increase, we must direct export to the emerging market” she said. According to Redma, countries in the middle east, like Saudi Arabia, united arab emirates, and south African countries, are important markets for textiles, including latin America countries, like brazil and chile, are emerging markets that have good prospect for Indonesian products. For this year the government sets target, to achieve the target, what must be done is by expansion to new potential markets.

Therefore, Redma urged the government to immediately solve the existing problems, according to her, are low competitiveness of national industries so they become unoptimal in market penetration. National textile industry has also hampered by internal problems. The problems are, according to her, for example, logistics and infrastructure problems which frequently discouraged textile businesses.

“traffic congestion and problem in the flow of transportation in the port are a problem to export” she said. In addition to that, electricity problem is complained by the businesses. Electricity service received by textile industries is not as expected. Unstable flow problem is never solved by the government, and it causes losses to the businesses. Redma also explained that textile businesses are recently facing soaring price of cotton as raw material. Before cotton price increased, the total price of 100 tons of raw material was Rp. 100 billions, and currently the amount increased to Rp. 200 billions. while, profit margin of textile industries is the lowest if compared to other manufacturing industries, or only 2%.