The garment industry has always been one of the most popular and powerful fields in the field of Turkish industries.
The value of ready-made garments and textile exports in Türkiye amounted to $5.2 billion during the first quarter of 2023.
However, the increase in production costs caused a decline in the sales of clothing factories in Türkiye, as merchants resorted to Bangladesh and India to buy, as a result of the stagnation in the sector, bearing in mind that the clothing industry is an important pillar of the Turkish economy, which suffers from an imbalance in the trade balance mainly.
According to the Turkish Cumhuriyet newspaper, the stagnation of the sector led to the loss of about 150,000 jobs over the past year.
Cumhuriyet newspaper pointed out that the high production costs affected the clothing industry in Türkiye, and was greatly reflected in its export of clothing, which is important in the country’s economy.
Türkiye’s ready-made garment exports declined by 7% during the first seven months of the year, while production in June 2023 fell to 70.8%.
With the beginning of the year, problems began to exacerbate in the ready-to-wear industry, which had stagnated since the beginning of the year, but escalated further last June, prompting many workshops and factories to consider closing.
Cumhuriyet newspaper added that mechanics are the groups most affected by this crisis, noting that the recession prompted many artisans in the ready-made clothing sector to sell their workshops due to the difficult situation.
In this context, one of the mechanical workshop owners said, “Everyone is closing their workshops and shops”.
According to some of the mechanics, who has been working in the sector for 30 years, he likens what is happening now to what happened during 2008, which was also a year of crises.
He added that there has been “a sharp decline in sales since the beginning of the summer, and the large production facilities in the Anatolia region have already begun to close”.
He continued, “Customers who were buying our products to export them to other countries moved to Bangladesh and India, and this left our factories empty… This crisis reminds me of what happened in 2008, but what happened then was much worse, and I hope it doesn’t happen now”.
