RI to get textile and textile product markets

JAKARTA (JP): The Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), which was recently approved in the multilateral Uruguay Round, will give a wider access to Indonesia's textiles and textile products on the world market.

An advisor to the Minister of Trade, Darry Salim, said in a two-day seminar here yesterday that the agreement will confine all kinds of bilateral relationships and gradually phase out the Multi Fiber Arrangement (MFA). He added that it will provide better market access for Indonesia's products due to the removal of the quota systems in a number of industrial countries within the next ten years.

Darry, who is a former director of foreign trade of the Ministry of Trade, said "the recent failure of bilateral agreement between Indonesia and the United States on textiles will accelerate the removal of the U.S. quota on Indonesia's textiles and textile products."

He said Indonesia will be the first country to be free of the U.S. quota system and will not have to wait ten years.

Meanwhile, a deputy chairman of the Indonesian Textile Association (API), Chamroel Djafri, said Indonesia will get new markets in the Scandinavian countries after the removal of their quota systems.

Chamroel said the new imposition of a quota system on Chinese products by the United States has caused China to lose US$4 billion annually from textile exports. Indonesia, therefore, has the chance to fill in the reduction of China's market share in the United States.

He said China, the world's most populous country, is also the target of Indonesia's textile exports.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Indonesia's exports of textiles and textile products increased by 19.6 percent in volume to 692,357 tons last year from 578,726 tons in 1992 and by two percent in value to $6.18 billion from $6.06 billion. (02)