Secondhand clothing a threat to textile industry

Business

THE secondhand clothing business in PNG has been a major challenge to the textile and garment industry, according to the Small to Medium Enterprise Corporation (SMEC).
Managing director Steven Malken said the secondhand clothing was a lucrative and booming business.
He said because of the high cost of making clothes and other products, local businesses could not compete against imported secondhand clothing and fabric.
He said PNG is yet to produce raw material such as cotton to develop fabric for clothing. Because businesses were importing fabric it added to their cost and affected the selling price of their products.
Apart from the imports, Malken said other challenges included the high cost and unreliable supply of power, lack of government assistance in start-up capital for business people and lack of industrial machinery.
Malken said the SMEC graduates students in the industry but could not support them with start-up capital.
“We should be working towards giving them capital or giving them industrial machines,” he said.
“That is what we are not providing for them and that is a worry. We are just training them and letting them fend for themselves.
“That is not a good way to accelerate the process of having more Papua New Guineans in the industry”
He said the SMEC had raised the concern with the government and he was not aware of any government commitments towards the industry.
Furthermore, Malken said SMEC will be working towards signing an agreement with the Indian government for capacity building programmes.
The Indian government had made a commitment at last year’s graduation to assist students from the SMEC.
“We will have students who have shown potential to send them to further training abroad,” Malken said.
He said there also was interest from Bangladesh which is currently in talks with SMEC.
He said the SMEC lacks industry data in terms of the industry’s present value and the number of local businesses operating in it and how much it generates.
“We do not have a central data storage system and it makes it difficult for us to know how much of our textile and garments are exported and how much its worth,” Malken said.