REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA- Textile and textile product (TPT) industry and footwear industry are major contributors to sustaining the country`s manufacturing sector. The TPT and footwear exports were valued at 12.46 billion USD last year, director general of manufacture industry Panggah Susanto said here Thursday. 

Apart from major contributor in export earning the two industries were labor intensive providing large jobs, Susanto said. He said the country`s footwear industry provide 1.8 percent of the world`s footwear requirement.

Susanto said 1.5 million jobs were provided for Indonesian workers by TPT industry and 700,000 jobs by footwear industry. Exports of footwear and other leather goods valued at 3.5 billion USD giving the country a surplus of 2 billion USD on the average annually in the trade of the two leather-based commodities in the past five years, he said. 

"The surplus in TPT trade in the past five years averaged 4.5 billion USD," he added. 

Last year, the country`s exports of commodities outside oil and gas grew 6.4 percent higher than the country`s economic growth rate of 6.23 percent. 

Susanto said processing industry outside the oil and gas sector contributed 23.04 percent to the country`s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The TPT, footwear and leather goods industries alone contributed 2.1 percent to the GDP. 

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