"The rupiah`s fluctuations over the past several days have not yet affected textile and textile product exports," chairman of the Indonesian Textile Businessmen`s Association (API) Ade Sudrajat said here on Saturday.
The rupiah`s value had in a week dropped against the US dollar and euro by 175 points to Rp8,900 on Wednesday.
On Saturday, the rupiah regained strength at the Rp8,924 level against the greenback after Bank Indonesia (BI/the central bank) intervened in the market.
The rupiah`s fluctuations, according to BI Deputy Governor Hartadi A Sarwono, happened due to the debt crisis in Europe.
"The crisis taking place in Europe is a state crisis not a consumer crisis," he said.
He said that the crisis that was taking place now was different from that in 2008 which was a consumer crisis so that Indonesia`s textile and textile product exports at that time dropped by 11.4 percent.
"But this year, Indonesia`s textile exports even increased 24.4 percent to 8.16 billion US dollars compared with that in the same period a year earlier," he said.
However, he said, if the United States and Europe did not take actions to safeguard their economies, it would not be impossible for the state crisis to turn into a consumer crisis.
"If the crisis escalates to the consumer crisis, the Indonesian textile industry must be ready to face it," Ade said.
In 2006, textile commodities contributed 20.02 percent to the national trade surplus and 3.8 percent to Indonesia`s Gross Domestic Product (PDB).
Indonesia is in the eleventh rank on the list of the world`s textile exporters and in the ninth position on the list of garment exporter countries.
(SYS/A014/H-YH)
Editor: Suryanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
