The Ministry of Industry has planned to resume restructuring program for the textile industry. Achmad Sigit Dwiwahjono, Director General of Chemical, Textile and Multifarious Industries, says after the evaluation, the restructuring program for textile machinery and equipment was very effective in encouraging the growth of the industry, especially in increasing utilization.

Some representatives of the Ministry of Industry visited China recently to explore cooperation related to the continuation of the textile machinery industry restructuring program. Sigit says before dismissed, the textile machinery restructuring program using funds from the state budget, in the future the government will seek other sources of funding that does not burden the state finances, one of them comes from China.

According to him, funding from the Bamboo Curtain country has borrowing interest cheaper than domestic commercial financing. Some of the financial institutions that are explored include China Development Bank (CDB) and Silk Road Fund, which is a financial institution formed by the Government of China. One of the conditions to be able to get finance from China is that the recipient must purchase a machine that is also produced by the country. The Ministry of Industry hopes that at least this year the restructuring program will continue with experiments for several companies first.

The need of the textile industry to replace the machines that are considered old is estimated at Rs 400 billion per year. In the previous restructuring program, the government provided a subsidy of 10 per cent of the investment value or the machine price and for each company a maximum of 5 billion.