Strategy Overview
The textile and apparel industries encompass a diverse range of products and interdependant
processes. The production chain includes fibers, yarns and filaments, and knit,
woven, and non-woven fabrics. Making-up products—the final step in preparing textiles for
consumption—involves cutting, sewing, and integrating accessories and trims for ready-made
garments. Final goods include clothing and textiles for the home and industry. Because the
apparel sector requires 3-5 times more labor than other activities, such as spinning, weaving,
knitting, or dying, it generates the most jobs in unskilled manufacturing in the world.
Development of the sector often marks the first step in industrial development. Like other
light and medium manufacturing industries, the sector not only lifts large segments of the
population from subsistence wages in the informal economy but also employs some of the
most disadvantaged workers, such as young uneducated women with few other employment
options.
In Mozambique, only 8 percent of the country’s 17 million people are employed in the formal
economy. Though statistics are scarce, it is well known that apparel industry workers are
often the sole earners in their households, in effect forming the essential component of the
safety net that keeps many from sliding into deep poverty. It is therefore important to
Mozambique’s long-term development that it tap the potential of its apparel sector. The sector
is not only labor-intensive, but the value added by garment workers, even to imported fabrics
and accessories, could have a greater impact on employment and the country’s trade balance
than other activities in the textiles sector. Value added in the capital-intensive textile industry
arises largely from the use of expensive, imported, machinery, spare parts, dyes, and
chemicals as well as skilled foreign workers.
Mozambique’s textile and textile product industries have gone through enormous change in
the past two decades. After emerging from a war-torn, centrally planned economy, most firms
faced a shortage of working capital and spare parts—all of which had to be imported—as well
as local markets of fewer than 18 million consumers, most with incomes well below the
poverty line. Moreover, restrictive labor laws and poor local management resulted in
productivity and quality levels “well below international standards” (Werner International,
1980). Substantial imports of used clothing underscored the limited means of most Mozambican consumers. Thus, local demand for new clothing and the productivity and size
of the apparel industry could not sustain the capital investments that a competitive spinning,
weaving, and finishing industry required simply to survive. Saddled with debt, rising labor
costs attributable to new regulations and laws, and a centralized industrial strategy that put
wealthy consumers in export markets beyond their reach, Mozambique’s textiles and apparel
industries dwindled to a few small suppliers of local niche markets. Most firms were not able
to meet the global economy’s high standards for quality, cost, and delivery or to meet the
demands of free markets. Meanwhile, globalization was unabated. The recent elimination of
textile and apparel quotas may have turned the industry into one of the world’s most
globalized.
Globalization, though controversial, offers opportunities to produce and consume a wide
variety of high-quality goods and services at the lowest possible cost. In the textile and
apparel industries, large producers and retailers manage complex, efficient, and responsive
production chains to meet consumer requirements for price, quality, and value. For example,
production is increasingly carried out in different locations. Fibers are produced where
climates, natural resources, and yields help producers meet expectations for quality and price.
Fiber processing is determined by the needs of yarn-consuming industries, which needs vary
by product, quality, and price requirements. Fabrics, in turn, are sold locally and globally.
Apparel manufacturing is located where costs and trade preferences are desirable, and where
buyer requirements for delivery, quality, and services can be met. A one-size-fits-all model
does not exist.
To succeed, Mozambique’s industrial strategy for the buyer-driven textile and apparel sector s
must capitalize on the sector’s natural advantages and globally competitive strengths, while
aiming to meet the requirements of global markets, rather than the desires of the government,
suppliers, or the public. The strategy must match Mozambique’s development objectives with
market requirements to ensure practical, sustainable results.
In addition, the national industrial strategy needs to encourage linkages to the textile value
chain—from the cotton fields to ginning, yarn spinning, knitting, weaving, dying, and
making-up products. In the near and medium-term, this means that the quality and yields of
cotton crops must be improved so that high-yield, high-quality cotton can boost the
competitiveness of the spinning industry for local, regional, and export markets. Improving
cotton production not only complements strategies for agricultural and rural development
but also can raise incomes and enable and encourage long-term integration of the textile and
textile product value chains in a manner consistent with high-quality, sustainable investment,
technological modernization, and a competitive cotton-to-garment industry. Exhibit 1
summarizes the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing Mozambique’s
apparel and textile industries. Remaining sections of this paper present strategies for apparel
and textile sector development.
Exhibit 1: Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis  - 106Kb ~ 1 min (1 pages)
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