SGMA to address current state, future prospects of garment industry

On behalf of the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association’s board of directors and its 22 member companies, association executive director Richard A. Pierce will be presenting a garment industry update at the Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s general membership meeting in April.

SGMA accepted Chamber president Alex Sablan’s invitation to update the Chamber of Commerce membership at their April 6, 2005 meeting. The venue site will be announced by the Chamber later this month.

“Our industry’s companies have weathered a considerable storm since the liberalization of trade practices at the beginning of this year,” said Pierce. “There has been corporate failure and downsizing of factories on-island, but there has been a resiliency demonstrated by almost all the factories on Saipan that businesses and government need to understand to better prepare for their future.”

The association spokesperson said that there has been a tremendous amount of negativity and sensationalizing of events where factory downsizing has occurred, and this has taken precedence over the important information about what will the future actually hold for the industry, the value it still holds for the islands’ economy and the jobs of tens of thousands of employees in the private and public sector dependent upon the industry itself.

“What business and government leaders need to know is what are the factories doing to protect themselves. This is a tremendously positive and reassuring story that needs to be told, and we are grateful to the Chamber of Commerce for allowing us an opportunity to present this to everyone,” Pierce added.

SGMA will illustrate what companies are now doing to withstand immense global price competition, competition from foreign countries’ free trade agreements with the United States, and a lesser access to the U.S. marketplace from quota restriction removal from all World Trade Organization members since Jan. 1, 2005.

“We have received many requests from elected and administrative government officials to provide them with everything from industry sales and revenue projections to industry plans for the ongoing slow and gradual downsizing in most factories. This presentation will provide the after effects of what we presented to the Chamber last Nov. 3, 2004,” Pierce said.

SGMA is now comprised of 22 licensed manufacturing companies, accounts for 22,000 jobs in the CNMI and provides a third of all direct government revenue to the CNMI government. (PR)