Textile industry calls for law enforcement

Players in the local textile industry have called on government to enforce regulations to prevent the influx of “cheap” textiles unto the market, which is detrimental to the industry.
The local industry for some time now has come under threat following the continuous trend of the importation of substandard textiles from outside the borders of the country, especially from Asian countries.
The President of Spinnet textile and garment cluster, Mrs Edwina Assan, told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in an interview that because Ghana has a liberalised trade economy, it is not able to fully regulate what is imported into the country.
She therefore called on government to review this policy to help the industry recover from the fierce competition it is currently facing which is making the industry unfavorable for traders.
The local Textile industry she also explained has the largest value chain for development hence the need to help it forge ahead. “The government is playing its part but we just want to draw their attention once again. When we are in business, government is also in business because we will pay our taxes.”
Mrs Assan made these remarks on the sidelines of an advocacy workshop organised by the group in collaboration with the BUSAC Advocacy Fund to engage all stakeholders and members on one platform to discuss and address challenges facing the industry.
The workshop was on the theme “towards a competitive market for the local textile and garment industry in Ghana”.
Challenges she said the industry was facing included access to new technology, low raw materials base, standardization of input for production, obsolete nature of machines and less access to international fairs.
She also explained there was the need for government to form more clusters of textile associations in all the regions, since Spinnet is only based in Accra, to undertake more advocacy exercise to salvage the industry from collapsing.
The General Secretary of the textile and Leather Workers Union, Mr. Abraham Koomson told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS earlier this year, that it was worrying to note that these pirated textiles that came from China did not only carry the designs of Ghanaian cloths but were imitated to let them appear like made in Ghana cloth although the Chinese textiles were less durable as compared to the made in Ghana cloth.
He said these cheap textiles were sold far below the prices of the Ghanaian textile there by  prompting most retailers of textiles from the local textile companies such as ATL, Printex, and GTP to abandon the  sale of local cloths and focus on imported wax prints to increase their profit margins. GB