Lebanon’s leather makers call for government action on cheap imports
Lebanon’s leather industry has warned that it may be forced to shed up to 70% of its workforce if the dumping of footwear from Southeast Asia continues unabated.
The alarm was sounded at a press conference organised by shoe and leather producers in Beirut last week, who said their position was fast being eroded by cheap imports. They said they wanted to see the government take an especially tough line on to the use of falsified import documentation.
According to George Darwish, head of the committee overseeing the affairs of tanners and shoe-makers in Lebanon, as recently at ten years ago there were 1000 tanners in business in Lebanon. "We are down now to 320" said Darwish, who underlined the point by showing a bundle of invoices obtained from Lebanese customs - each quoting different prices for the same brand of imported shoes.
The call for action was echoed by Beirut tanner Fawzi Abou Moujahed, who said the government was losing millions of Lebanese pounds every year through falsified import documentation and the practice of marking down prices on supplier invoices. It had also led to the anomalous situation where a country with a population of only four million was importing some 17 million pairs a year, Moujahed said.
Delegates protested that the on-paper price of imported Southeast Asian footwear was now so low that the very existence of the domestic industry was threatened . They also said their predicament was not being helped by the government’s decision in December to reduce import tariffs on leather goods from 35% to 25% - factor which had further depressed the price-competitiveness of domestically produced items by an estimated 10%.
Bata, the country’s largest footwear retailer, had recently closed its last Lebanese factory with the loss of 260 jobs, having switched entirely to imported footwear, Darwish said.
