Bright textiles made in Tunisia ! Twenty tunisian industrial sector are participating at the show, Première vision, who, until September 21, brings together the professionals of the textile at the parc des expositions Villepinte. “Last year, they were no more than six “, welcomes Afef Zeddini, an economic advisor at the embassy of Tunisia in Paris. All were added to their backlog, hoping to emerge definitively from the crisis they’re going through for the past seven years.
In the aftermath of the revolution and the flight of Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, the sector which accounts for 20 % of the GDP of the country was entered into a severe area of turbulence. The attacks of 2015 in Tunis and on the beaches of Sousse were then paralyzed the tourists. Since then, many of the leaders of fashion brands have also waived to get into the country, and manufacture their collections. Social protests have also worried. “Outsourcers have become afraid,” says Daniel Harari, CEO of Lectra, a leading manufacturer of software and machines for the sector.
The leader of the jean, Levi Strauss, has preferred to Egypt, its cotton mills, its weavers, and its garment factories. Others have chosen to reduce production in Tunisia, in favour of the plants of Morocco, Turkey or, of course, those located in Asia.
In an activity, which exports 98 % of its production to the european Union, this drop in orders was wrong. In particular, in the Sahel of tunisia, near Monastir, where the textile of the country. “In 2008, the sector had 2,000 companies. There are more than 1 600, ” said Nejib Karafi, director-general of the Federation of tunisian textile and clothing industry. And in the aftermath, the number of jobs has plummeted to 158 600 employees. The textile remains, however, a big employer, totalling “31 % of the workforce of the manufacturing industry,” observes…
