The number of companies that operate with customer material in the field of textiles and shoes is decreasing, due to their massive bankruptcies, or those that continue to significantly reduce their activity.
The Association of Exporters announced that the company IMES ALB CËRRIK has more than 80 people in assistance and will be closed today.
KRAL SHOES is operating at 70% capacity, as 30% of the activity has been moved to Tunisia. The association announced that the entire production will be transferred very soon.
Another company, ALTEK shpk, has dismissed 100 employees out of 350. Very soon he thinks of moving to Tunisia or Egypt.
ROZIMPEKS, founded in October 1992, is assisting 150 workers.
DONCHRIS 2 has left 47 workers out of a job after it closed in December 2023.
The company PICARI shpk, based in Patos, has sent home 270 workers.
SUPREME BRUNO has only 20 employees currently, from the 140 it had before. According to the data from the Association, for a week this enterprise is being closed altogether.
MERLIKA shpk, which had 100 employees, has been closed. SFIDAL shpk, out of 270 employees, today has 170.
Only from these reports of the Association, in a few days almost 1 thousand employees have lost their jobs and their number is expected to increase. Florian Zekja from the Association of Exporters said that the companies are closing down because the partners, mainly Italian, are leaving overnight, moving to countries where the cost of production is cheaper, such as Tunisia or Egypt.
According to Zekja, the main reason that affected the cost increase is the devaluation of the euro, which has automatically increased production costs by 17%, in addition to higher wages.
“After 2022, which so far was the best and we had a lot of orders, 2023 hurt companies a lot because of the devaluation of the euro,” he says.
Zekja adds that these dismissed employees will become a burden for the budget and taxpayers, as assistance must be paid. The solution given by the government, for this category to be employed in tourism, is almost utopia.
In addition to the fact that the employees may be on the verge of retirement, it is almost impossible for them to be accommodated in tourist units, which are far from their residences, while tourism is anyway seasonal and there are jobs generally for four months. “And the other eight months, what will they do?”
Zekja said that entrepreneurs understand that the industry needs to be transformed to a higher level, but they do not have the capacity to do so without the help of the government. “The transformation did not happen by itself, as in Serbia, nor in Turkey, for example, the intervention of the state is needed. We were promised a fiscal package in 2021 for fashion, but that was never implemented.”
The figures also show that the textile and footwear industry, which works with custom material (fason) and is one of the largest employers in the country (mainly of low-income groups), is in a difficult situation. For the sixth month in a row, textile and footwear exports have followed the shrinking trend.
In October, this group shrank by 18.7%, the steepest decline since the pandemic period, when factories shut down due to problems created in the global economy by pandemic restrictions.
For the entire 11-month period, the exports of this group have decreased by 5.8%. Textiles and shoes are the largest export group in the country, with about 29% of the total./Monitor
