Indonesia: Garment exports to continue momentum in to next year

The economic turmoil has started taking its toll worldwide and has started affecting operations of a majority of countries in the business of exports of textile and clothing. But the one country to beat this trend seems to be Indonesia which has a booming garment export industry and which accounts for 60 percent of all shipments from the textile sector.
This has come about due to the massive investment to the tune of US $363 million in the garment industry in the current year, which is expected to bring a growth rate of 11.4 percent in the present year and 10 percent in 2009. Clothing shipments are projected to touch $6.4 billion by end of this year compared to $5.82 billion last year.Clothing shipments are expected to grow at a faster pace than the 8 percent projected for the textile sector as a whole.
Sectoral exports are anticipated to reach $10.8 billion from $10.3 billion achieved in the last year. In spite of massive layoffs in the core textile industry, the garment industry has added 50,000 employees to its headcount of 1 million workers in 2008. This level of employment in the apparel sector has been made possible only because of the substantial investment in the sector in 2008, which is the highest in five years. Irrespective of the layoffs in the textile sector, the booming garment sector has still not witnessed any closures or part closures leading to layoffs till date.
Exports from the garment industry account for a marginal 3-4 percent of global exports and ranks 11th among all global exporters, but is expected to better in future years, if it complies with best manufacturing practices as prevalent in a few other Asian countries. Experts aver that the biggest stumbling block faced by exporters is lack of proper communication and marketing tools and also to a great extent research and development activities.But they add that the markets of the US and EU will continue to be the main markets from the sector, with Russia and the Middle East acting as buffers. The US is the major destination with a market share of 26 percent, followed by the EU with 12 percent, ASEAN 5 percent and Japan 3 percent.