AMMAN — Faced with shocking new circumstances as the
COVID-19 pandemic took hold, the Jordanian garment industry rapidly pivoted to producing
face masks to reduce the spread of the virus.
اضافة اعلان
Local factories have produced around half a billion masks
since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Ehab Qadiri, representative
of the leather and clothing sector at
Amman Chamber of Industry.
Qadiri told the Jordan News Agency, Petra, that the Kingdom
has surplus quantities of medical masks ready for exporting, adding that last
year, around 100 million masks were exported to 30 global markets around the
world, at a value of over 16 million JD.
Over the
course of the pandemic, the country went from producing around 20,000 masks a
day to more than 5 million masks a day, according to Musa Saket, vice chair and
CEO of the Alia Group and founder of the “Made in Jordan” campaign. “That of
course is an opportunity for us to export,” said Saket in an interview with
Jordan News.
Saket
explained that the Jordanian free trade agreement with the United States set up
the Kingdom for success when it came to exporting masks. “We have exported
around a billion dollars’ worth of goods to the United States of America almost
yearly,” he said. The strength of that existing trade relationship made it easy
to begin exporting masks after garment factories transitioned to making masks.
“If there wasn’t
a good export market before, it would have been very difficult” to switch
garment factories from making their usual clothing items to making masks,
according to Saket. He called the FTA and the strong trade relationship with
the US the “secret” to Jordan’s success with exports, even at a time when many
markets were closed and economic sectors suffered.
“This was a
chance and opportunity for us to produce goods of course, for Jordan, to
actually accommodate the pandemic, and to find new export markets,” he said. He
explained that during the pandemic, most consumers prioritized buying food
rather than garments, causing the industry to suffer. “Garment exports
decreased dramatically. So this was a compensation, for these industries to
produce the masks,” Saket said.
He added
that while there have been a few new factories created to meet the demand for
masks, for the most part the garment industry has remained at the same size.
“It’s the
same workers that were working in the garment industry, just shifted to working
on lines to produce masks,” he said. “There was no new industry that opened to
produce masks, just existing industries that changed their efforts from
garments to masks.”
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