The Japan Textile Federation recently held a general meeting in Tokyo and adopted its 2017 policy.
The federation will continued the policy of the previous year, and will actively respond to trade issues and trade expansion, as well as continuing to focus on improvement of the infrastructure. In addition to strengthening information dissemination capabilities, efforts will be made for dealing with safety and environmental issues, the promotion of structural reforms, securing and nurturing human resources, and response to tax issues.
In regard to trade issues, a free trade agreement among China, Korea and Japan is positioned as the most important FTA, and JTF will actively take part in rulemaking activities on trade liberalization, which will lead to mutual development of the textile industry and trade expansion, through the Expert Group that was formed by the Japan-China-Korea Textile & Clothing Conference.
In promoting structural reforms, business practices are to be improved, and a voluntary action plan was made in cooperation with the Association for Promotion of Reform of the Distribution Structure in the Textile Industry (SCM Promotion Association). The revitalization of textile production districts along with maintenance and reinforcement of industrial bases in Japan are also being promoted as part of structural reform promotion.
Self-support and independence are to be promoted with an improvement of production efficiency and planning and sales abilities by sharing information with the use of IoT and big data.
Masanao Kanbara has become the new President of JTF, and expressed his idea of making the development of new markets a medium-to-long-term policy. The President appealed that the creation of new domestic and overseas markets through the promotion of developments and cross-industry collaboration and the dissemination of information are important issues.