A prudent question to ask " why is Chinese clothes cheaper to manufacture? What are they doing that we can emulate? Is power cheap, are taxes favorable , are cost of production of cotton lower …" there is something unique Chinese aRe doing that if copied we will produce same cheap clothes .
There is a way production and innovation results in creation of more jobs, when banks complained that mpesa was killing the banking industry jobs, they didnt know of Mpesa to Bank integrations and for us all the Mpesa agent jobs and Mpesa income to MPESA owners… you agree with me there are more mpesa owners than bankers… contextualising to your question, imagine a factory that produces clothes, there are employess , there are businesses that will come up to support those factories and factory workers … at best … the mitumba sellers can start selling brand new clothes … while volumes may be low, trust me the margins will be better.
Create 100,000 jobs where??? We ban mitumba and we are out of AGOA. The hawkers AND the textile workers go home.
The only way our textile factories can work without AGOA is if we pay the workers like Bangladesh ;6,000 bob a month as opposed to the current sh 18,000.
The Americans made it very clear that if we ban mitumba we are out of AGOA.
So in essence both the textile workers and the traders lose.
We do not get to have our cake and eat it.Rwanda was already suspended but Rwanda had a tiny textile industry to begin with.
Ours is a 60 billion shilling enterprise and growing aand it depends soley on AGOA to survive.Local purchases form a tiny fraction (5%) of sales and this is in spite of incentives to sell local
If we are suspended those factories die instantly as our clothes will be more expensive than AGOA clothes from say Lesotho and Ethiopia.
We produce expensive goods which can’t compete. Partly due to cartels, government policy and also due to inefficiency in our systems. Look at how a few maize farmers are shafting themselves and others by importing maize.
Industrialization and value addition creates more job opportunities than businesses. Two Good examples.
1.Githunguri is a small town located in Kiambu County where the Fresha milk plant is located. More than 50% of constituents are farmers. All major banks have branches or agencies there. Colleges,academies and support businesses have sprang up and small scale businesses thrive due to the existence of the plant. If the plant is closed/run down the multiplier effect would affect everyone there and beyond.
2.Panpaper in Webuye is a living testimony of what would happen if a company is run down. The town and life there froze as all were dependent on the existence of the company.
If you check the towns in the counties there is a driver therein and most vibrant are reliant on industries and not civil service or county workers. Where most of the populace is made of civil servants its a sleepy town.
If we specialized our regions and maximized what can be efficiently produced we can succeed like chinkus.
Watu husahau haraka sana. Mtush ilisaidia wengi to afford relatively new clothes and in the process did away with pecuniary embarrassments like body lice, etc.
There was something called KiKomi and rivatex. They were eaten literally by Moi and cronies. That was around the same time we were allowing mitumba by USA.
Tis thing is working in Rwanda because they are not Kenyans.
Nothing is working for Rwanda!!!
Rwanda can no longer export their textiles since they are extremely expensive to make in the first place and now that they are out of AGOA,Duty applies.
There exists an internal market for Rwandan clothes for clothing Rwandans but:
1.It is a tiny market worth at most sh 100 million or so.
2.It is domimated by Chinese textile manufacturers who pay their workers a pittance just like in Ethiopia.
So .No.