REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Industry Minister Saleh Husin asked the country's textile industrialists to secure domestic market while looking for expansion of export market.

"We must secure domination of the domestic market and then we seek expansion of export market in Middle East or Africa," Saleh said after opening the national congress of the Indonesian Textile Association (API) here on Wednesday.

The minister said by domination of the domestic market the Indonesian textile industrialists are already in control of a huge and potential market.

Saleh predicted that global textile market would improve and demand would increase that producers should be able to anticipate and prepare for a surge in demand.

"It is just unlikely the purchasing power would continue to be on the decline . The market would certainly rebound. Therefore, competitiveness has to be strengthened and sales have to be expanded to non traditional market," he said.

He said the country's textile industry has been well integrated from upstream to downstream, and the quality is already competitive in international market.

Therefore, it is important for Indonesia to place itself more aggressively in the middle to high segments and begin to introduce Indonesian brands.

He said the textile industry produces not only clothes , but also non clothe products such as materials used in road infrastructure,food industry, automotive industry and medical industry, etc.

These types of textile industry known as non woven industry already expanded in marketing growing 9.9 percent per year in the past five years, he said.

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