Garment exports post growth By ALDWIN R. FAJARDO
Saipan’s billion-dollar garment manufacturing industry apparently remains unperturbed by flak the sector gets from its mainland U.S. bashers as the CNMI government reported significant growth in apparel exports last year.
The Quarterly Economic Review released by the CNMI Department of Commerce noted that total apparel exports from April to June last year reached $256 million.
The figure is over $40 million higher than the 1998 first quarter tally of $216.2 million, although lower than the average $260 million quarterly garment export in 1998.
For the whole of 1998, Saipan’s garment manufacturing industry exported over $1 billion worth of apparel products.
Government officials are not likely to rely heavily on the industry’s second quarter growth, however.
Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio and his financial managers maintained a conservative projections on user fee collection for the next fiscal year, explaining that the government is still yet to feel the adverse effects of the billion-dollar class action suit filed against the local garment sector.
A number of garment manufacturing companies on Saipan have reported a dramatic decline in orders from their mainland US buyers since the class action suit were filed in three federal courts earlier this year.
Major buyers of Saipan-made apparel products include the Gap, Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren’s Polo line.
The garment industry has been expected to pull out of the CNMI in seven years when the agreement which created the World Trade Organization takes into effect.
A kin to this, the United States will have to phase out its garment quota system by 2005. The garment industry ships some $1 billion worth of apparel products to the United States every year.
Some garment manufacturing companies have already started establishing factories in Mexico. Cambodia, the Philippines and other Latin American countries.
Observers anticipate no more than five- to seven-year life for garment production on the island, citing the absence of specific advantages offered by the CNMI government to garment manufacturers other than the existing tariff and quota exemptions.
