The textile sector, like others, is on alert due to the drop in activity. While the registered salary fell on average 14.9% between November and April, businessmen in the sector warn of the drop of 60% in sales and an expressed concern about consequent layoffs.
Between Tuesday and Thursday of this week, an event was held in La Rural that brought together the entire textile industry: Emitex (International Exhibition of Suppliers for the Clothing Industry), Confemaq (International Clothing Machinery Exhibition) and Simatex (International Textile Machinery Exhibition).
Those who attended the meeting in Palermo noticed that alarms went off in all the stands. Through the wide corridors of La Rural, businessmen toured the pavilions in groups, to listen to various references and maintain a global market perspective.
The conclusions about the current panorama were not good. Camilo Alan, textile businessman, sums it up like this: “No one is selling. businessmen are very worried. “Fixed expenses rose between 70% and 80%, and sales fell 60%.” These numbers lead to the worst outcome: “We are downsizing employees because we don’t know how to pay them,” he told this medium.
The crisis in the sector spreads throughout the country. This is how Jorge González, secretary of the Textile Workers Association (AOT) of Catamarca, describes it: “What we are experiencing is tremendous. The fall is very hard”summarizes.
Gonzalez match with the number offered by the textile businessman regarding a 60% drop in sales and the problem of the costs of electricity and gas services. Businesses and industries no longer maintain subsidized rates, they pay the real wholesale cost of inputs, which leads them to pay rates between three and seven times more expensive compared to December of last year.
Concern about layoffs
Along these lines, it also coincides with the retraction within the labor market. “Between Tucumán, Corrientes, La Rioja and Catamarca there are around six thousand workers suspended and more than three thousand workers laid off”Warns González.
In this way, factories maintain “stock to the ceiling“, because “the sale is zero.” That is why the AOT secretary reflects: “When the President (Milei) says that inflation is going down, he should clarify that it is because people consume absolutely nothing”.
At the national level, the union led by Hugo Benítez, denounced the paralysis of the joint negotiation with the business chamber Federation of Argentine Textile Industries (FITA) “as a result of the contumacious meanness of its representatives.”
Raúl Hutin, SME leader and founder of the textile company SCALTER, puts a number on the shutdown of machinery: “The recession affects deeply and religiously. We are working at 37% of the installed capacity“, he regrets and assures that “the worst has not yet come, as the President says.”
The sector is also affected by the opening of imports. This point was especially expressed in the meeting that the Undersecretary of Commerce of the Province of Buenos Aires, Ariel Aguilar, held this Thursday with Alberto Gelené, mayor of the Las Flores Party.
“Together with Mayor @albertogelene we met with representatives of the textile and footwear sector of Flowers. He consumption fell a 25% and increased a 27% the imports. As a consequence the production was reduced almost by fifty%. It is planned industrialicide,” Aguilar published on the social network X.
For Hutin, the sector is in a “depressive stage,” although he insists that SMEs “seek to resist until the end,” before making an adjustment to the number of personnel. However, he admits that layoffs are already taking place and believes that the end of the economic program “It can be a social and industrial disaster.”
Source: Ambito
