A senior trade union official in Algeria has said the African country’s textiles industry is now in crisis. Speaking on national radio, Ammar Takdjout, secretary general of the General Workers’ Union (UGTA), said the government should take urgent steps to protect jobs in the textile sector for the sake of Algeria’s “precarious national economy”.

He criticised Algeria for handling badly the flow of cheaper goods into the country from China and applauded proposed moves to lower taxes on locally produced goods. He called on political parties to come up with more concrete suggestions like this in the build up to elections later this month.

“What’s difficult to understand,” he said, “is that people are talking about ways to create a new economy for Algeria when we already have in front of us, through the textile industry, the means to have a good economy. What is lacking is a way of injecting some dynamism into the industry to set it on a path to growth.”

As a result of a lack of investment and a reduction in productivity, the Algerian textile sector has lost around 80,000 jobs over the last two decades.