The Executive Director of the Textile Rayon Islamic Association Alumni Association (KAHMI Tekstil) stated that the Attorney General's Office findings regarding funds amounting to IDR 60 billion along with assets from Andy Chandra Tan as the owner of PT Budi Agung Sentosa must be followed up. His party suspects that the crossing out of two names as witnesses in the illegal import case involving suspect Irianto also involved several former officials at the echelon 1 and 2 levels across three Ministries, which might be continued by their replacement officials.
"It has become an open secret in the textile sector that many textile companies connected to PT Budi Agung Sentosa received very large yarn and fabric import quotas and sold them at much lower prices, thereby suppressing domestic producer prices," Agus explained. KAHMI Tekstil strongly suspects that this condition is what caused more than a hundred textile companies to go out of business.
Agus also re-highlighted the PPATK findings regarding the alleged concealment of illegal textile business turnover worth IDR 12.49 trillion flowing through employee accounts, which has not been followed up to date. "And many other findings related to the abuse of Bonded Zone (KB) and Import Facilities for Export Purposes (KITE) facilities that have not been followed up by law enforcement officers and authorized ministries," Agus revealed.
KAHMI Tekstil hopes the new Minister of Industry can map it out clearly, because this problem is the main cause of damage to the textile sector ecosystem that has been covered up by officials in the bureaucracy. "For that reason, KAHMI Tekstil is ready to support the government in improving the textile sector's performance by bringing problems to light rather than covering them up," Agus asserted.
Previously, the national textile industry stakeholders have once again highlighted the weak law enforcement regarding business competition practices, which has caused more than 100 companies to close and led to hundreds of thousands of worker layoffs over the past four years. Secretary General of the Indonesian Fiber and Filament Yarn Makers Association (APSyFI), Farhan Aqil Syauqi, stated that domestic products certainly cannot compete if they have to face dumping products upstream and illegal import products downstream.
According to Farhan, the government cannot continuously nurture this unfair competition by granting raw material import conveniences for yarn and fabric while permitting wholesale illegal import practices on finished garments. "Tolerating dumping practices and illegal importations has caused severe damage to the strength of integration within the national textile and textile product (TPT) industry ecosystem."
Processed data from Trade Map shows that our TPT sector's import ratio rose from 55% to 83% over the last 10 years. This indicates an acute addiction to imported goods from upstream to downstream. This contrasts sharply with Vietnam, whose ratio actually fell from 70% to 28% over the same period. "It is no wonder that the TPT sector's contribution to GDP is currently below 1%, whereas Vietnam can reach 6%," Farhan explained.
However, stopping the addiction to imported goods is no easy task either. In the case of filament yarn anti-dumping, Farhan stated that institutions such as KADIN and APINDO, and even KPPU, actually supported dumping importation practices, making the government hesitate to implement it.
In 10 years, the government has tinkered with various incentive policies, and during that time, our TPT sector's contribution to GDP dropped from 3.5% to 0.97%. "So as long as the pro-import regime remains entrenched, our TPT sector will never be able to recover, because this becomes a crucial issue that hinders investment," he said.
A similar sentiment was expressed by the General Chairman of the Association of Working Confectionery Entrepreneurs (IPKB), Nandi Herdiaman, who stated that currently, besides illegal importation, legal importation has also begun disrupting the sales of small-and-medium enterprise (IKM) finished garment products. "Wholesale illegal importation of finished garments continues freely to this day without any real action from the government," Nandi expressed.
Nandi reminded of the potential increase in finished garment imports following the implementation of Minister of Trade Regulation No. 17 of 2025. The regulation governs Import Approval requirements from the Ministry of Trade as well as technical considerations regarding import quotas from the Ministry of Industry.
He also highlighted the increase in yarn imports by 84.19% and fabric by 20.28% throughout 2017–2025. This increase is considered a reflection of the heavy import pressure that the domestic textile industry must face.
Industry players request that the government not rely solely on changes in import policies and the provision of incentives to improve the condition of the TPT sector. They assess that field supervision and enforcement against alleged violations must become an important part of efforts to protect the national industry.
