William Anderson, head of social and environmental affairs for adidas in the Asia Pacific region has responded to accusations that the sportswear brand has been paying "poverty wages" at some of its overseas facilities.

"These are not new claims," he says, "and the fact that the allegations have surfaced in the run up to the Olympic Games isn’t new either. It reflects the normal advocacy cycle, where the international trade unions and labour rights group do their very best to draw the world’s attention to working conditions in the developing world."

Responding to complaints that it was paying “as little as 34 pence an hour” in Indonesia, Mr Anderson said: "Adidas has spent a lot of time looking into the question of fair wages, launching research back in 2001/2002 in Indonesia, developing guidelines and training programmes and, more recently, piloting a Fair Wage Assessment tool to help factories improve the process of wage setting.

"And we can say with complete candour that pay remains a complex and not-so-easy-to-address topic for our contract factories; especially where the overall cost of doing business has been steadily climbing due to fuel and commodity price increases, and consumers have been equally sensitive – in these times of austerity – to higher prices.

He added: “To a large extent, worker’s wages are determined by their local job market, the skill levels of the workers, the overall level of economic development in the country where they live and the actions taken by government in fixing minimum wages. Brands, and their buying practices, are not a significant driver."

He also said: "It is little misleading, however, to convert workers’ wages into another ‘hard’ currency. This does not lend itself to a proper comparison. Pay has to be considered in terms of what it buys locally.

"So if you earn a dollar in India and a dollar in the USA what you can buy for that dollar is very different, given the differences in the costs of living in each country. To get around this economists usually compare pay in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, or PPP, against a common basket of goods."

Mr Anderson uses a graph from the International Labour Organisation, which shows PPP of $85 for Vietnam, $148 for Indonesia, $173 for China, $229 for Pakistan, $295 for Thailand and $379 for the Philippines.

"Whereas adidas has only 0.005% of our global supply chain in Bangladesh, which is a very low wage cost country, we source a lot more of our goods from other parts of Asia.

"Although the data is a couple of years old, I thought I would share with you the International Labour Organisation’s summary of the Purchasing Power Parity of minimum wages in selected countries in Asia. These are countries where 80% of our global production takes place."

In conclusion, Mr Anderson said: "With overtime pay, performance bonuses and other allowances, a worker’s ‘take home’ wage, as paid by our suppliers, is often double this number."

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