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History of Sri Lanka Textile & Apparel Industry
Harshani Wijendra
Sri Lanka Institute of Textile & Apparel Technology (SLITA)
Email: harshani_bipasha@yahoo.com
Harshani Wijendra
Sri Lanka Institute of Textile & Apparel Technology (SLITA)
Email: harshani_bipasha@yahoo.com
Introduction:
The Global Textile Industry, particularly the Apparel Industry has seen remarkable changes in the past few years. The Garment Manufacturing Industry and the Garment Companies in developed countries are now always on a lookout for cheap source of garment production. The days are gone when textile garment industry was concentrated in the consumption hubs of US, EU and other developed countries of the world. The clothing wholesale supply is increasing worldwide in all the sectors of the industry, whether it be men’s clothing, women’s clothing, kids wear or infant wear. The elimination of global export quotas has led to a shift towards low cost countries having strong and established Clothing Industry especially the Asian countries. And Sri Lanka is one among those Asian Countries.
As per the Global Textile and Apparel Industry: Vision 2015, World textile and apparel trade is expected to reach US$805bn by 2015 from US$650bn in 2010. At present few countries like Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan contribute major share in Forex earnings of their country from Textile and Clothing trade, though their share in the world market is not very significant.
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| Condition of Global Textile Market |
The textile and clothing industry had emerged from a modest beginning in the early 1950s A few pioneering industrialists who started out on an uncertain course at this time , confident their manufacture to only some popular items of garments and catered essentially to local demand. By the end of the 1950’s there was a reversal in policies and the economy moved towards restrictions on imports and a policy of import substitution in industry began to be perused. While the major basic industries were reserved for the state; a wide range of consumer goods industries were opened to the private sector , which was provide with various investment incentives and a protected market. Over the decade of the 1960’s as many as 300 categories of industrial products began to be manufactured locally. Among this range of products a major item was textiles and another readymade garments, though from the outset raw materials required for the garments industry were imported.
It was in the late1960’s that Sri Lanka’s readymade garments began to break into export markets. Sri Lanka’s shirts had found acceptability in markets such as the UK and Soviet Union and a leading shirt manufacture began exporting up to Rs: 2 million worth of product annually to the USSR, within the bilateral trade agreement between Sri Lanka and the USSR.
Around 1972 there was a change in outlook towards the industry as existing policy was altered to allow certain sectors to adapt an export oriented approach. Special foreign exchange allocations and other fiscal and tax incentives were offered to selected export oriented industries under this package. In the first six years of the 1970’s over 2500 industrial units received approval from the Local Industries Approve Committee (LIAC) and of these nearly 2000 were in the product group of Textiles and Textile based industries. By the mid 1970’s wage/ pries inflation and imposition of trade quotas on exports of traditional Asian Suppliers of made-up garments such as Hong Kong , Taiwan, South ,Korea and Singapore made Sri Lanka more attractive location for the industry. New units began to be established in collaboration with foreign capital/marketing, while production was being upgraded through import.
The period after the late 1970s saw a rapid expansion of the clothing industry in Sri Lanka. The impressive growth witnessed during this period can be attributed to two major factors. The first is the market-oriented liberal economic policies introduced in 1977. The market friendly economic reforms, which identified the private sector as the engine of growth, places greater emphasis on the export-led industries.
The second important factor which contributes to the remarkable expansion of the Sri Lanka textile and clothing industry is the Multi Fibre Arrangement (MFA). Sri Lanka is one of the countries that benefited from the quota hopping investments. The overseas manufactures of garment that relocated their production facilities in Sri Lanka include firms from both and Newly Industrialize Countries (NICs) in East Asian and Europe. While the NIC
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| Sri Lankan Textile & Apparel Industry |
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