James Lin, in an interview on Tuesday, said the surviving garment factories are US-CNMI, Rifu Corp. and Uno Moda.
One of them will shut down in December.
Lin said they met with Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and other administration officials on Sept. 28 to inform them they were officially dissolving SGMA.
The association, which used to have more than 20 member companies, became inactive when garment shops started shutting down in 2005, following the liberalization of international trade rules, as agreed upon by the member countries of the World Trade Organization in 1995.
Local garment factories could not compete with their counterparts in the Third World where labor costs were way lower.
Lin’s garment factory, United International Corp., stopped its operations on Sept. 24.
SGMA had been around for 27 years and the first local factory to shut down was Eurotex Inc. in 2000.
In 2001, Global Manufacturing and Trans-Asia Garment merged with Concorde Garment Manufacturing Inc., only to shut down in 2006.
NET Apparel merged with UIC, and Trans-America merged with Handsome Saipan Inc.
In 2002, Micronesian Garments Manufacturers Inc., Diorva Saipan Ltd., NET Corp. and Advance Textiles closed down one after the other.
LaMode Inc. filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and in 2005, Neo Fashions Inc., Express Manufacturing Inc., Sako Corp., Mariana Fashions and Winners II stopped their operations.
In 2006 Hyujin Saipan, and American Pacific Textile shut down their factories.
More closures were announced in 2007 and earlier this year.
After MGM’s factory was gutted by a fire a few months ago, UIC shut down.
