(Tempo May 22, 2006)
“Countries need to support sectors that can tap local skill sets. The textile sector has shown that it can take lower strata semi-educated individuals with basic education and enhance ‘finger skills’ and ‘well developed hand-eye coordination’ through training and productivity efforts. The workers have shown to be fast learners and buyers often place more complicated orders with Indonesian producers while routing basic orders to South Asian nations. With over 70 percent of textile sector workers being women, the sector is also crucial to social stability. If Indonesia is to fully recover from the economic crisis it must do so by empowering women to a greater extent and giving them opportunities to become more financially independent, vocationally qualified and aware of their rights.
In summary this ‘core’ sector [textiles] is now like a tired patient, afflicted with multiple problems and in need of urgent attention. Ad hoc ‘doses’ like holding off tariff power hikes or canceling port handling cost increases are welcome but not enough. There needs to be a comprehensive policy package – set up a separate textiles ministry (as has been the case in India since post-independence), negotiate preferential market access, arrange for loans from development agencies for modernization and expansion, incentivize local bank lending, improve infrastructure, reform labor laws after educating worker representatives on the need for reasonable change, make repatriation of export proceeds compulsory, manage rupiah and interest rate volatilities, create textile training institutes to enhance productivity and skill sets, support the migration of units to Central Java and control dumping/smuggling of cheap imports.
The patient is gasping. Intensive care needs to be provided quickly and in a sustained manner over the next five years. The wider health of the economy depends on it.”
