If you are wearing a pair of Levi’s jeans, whip them off and check out the label, because Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS reckons there is a good chance it will read “Made in Turkmenistan.”
This surprising revelation was made at the unwieldily titled “Main Directions in the Development of Turkmenistan’s Textile Industry” exhibition, which opened in Ashgabat over the weekend. Textiles are a very distant second-placed contributor to Turkmenistan’s economy and seen by the government as a crucial avenue for diversifying industrial output, so this news must come as music to President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's ears.
Almost certainly citing some exhibition literature, ITAR-TASS also points out that 70 percent of cotton and silk goods made in Turkmenistan are exported.
Export markets include Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Japan. And IKEA too, apparently.
Driving the point home, flamboyant Russian designer Valentin Yudashkin visited a textile factory and described output as meeting “the most stringent international standards.” High praise indeed.
This is all well and dandy, but as Uzbekistan has learnt to its dismay, when consumers learn where their threads come from, they are wont to kick up a stink. Will Turkmenistan fall foul of the same problem?
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