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Textile Sector Increasingly Profitable
Thriving home and overseas markets and stable prices for cloth have made China's textile industry buoyant.
Textile enterprises in China, which number roughly 18,300, reported net profits of 8 billion yuan (US$963 million) in the first five months of this year, compared with a figure of 800 million yuan (US$96.4 million) for the whole year of 1999, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Industrial experts attributed the rapid increase in the sector's profits to buoyant Chinese and international markets.
Official statistics indicate that Chinese consumers spent an average of 48.21 yuan (US$5.8) per month on clothing in the first five months of this year, up 4.85 per cent on an annual basis.
Moreover, garment sales in large department stores nationwide registered an annual increase of 15.5 per cent in the January-May period, according to official estimates.
China's textile sector has been able to increase the volume of its sales and its production only as a result of flourishing domestic demand, said an official from the State Textile Industry Bureau (STIB).
The sector's income from sales, about 299.5 billion yuan (US$36.1 billion) in January-May, registered a 25.2 per cent increase compared with the same period last year, NBS statistics show.
China's production of synthetic fibre, woolen yarn, cotton cloth and silk increased by 15.7 per cent, 17.5 per cent, 12.6 per cent and 25 per cent respectively compared with the same period last year .
China's textile and garment exports have also continued to surge.
In the first five months, China exported about US$19.31 billion worth of garments and textile products, up 40.3 per cent from the same period last year, according to statistics from the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
An official from GAC said the textile sector had earned US$14.02 billion in foreign exchange in the first five months of this year, accounting for about 13.4 per cent of the country's total net foreign exchange earnings in the period.
China's textile industry has improved the quality of its exports after two years of technological upgrading and efficiency improvements, he said.
He pointed to the fact that the proportion of textile exports totally made in China continued to increase.
An official from the textile bureau said State-run textile enterprises, the major beneficiaries of the sector's two-year reforms, have also improved their conditions.
However, State-run textile enterprises in 15 of the country's 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions are still making a loss.
Thirteen of them, located in the central and western parts of China, accounted for about 68 per cent of State-run textile enterprises' losses over the five months under discussion, said the official.
Cotton, garments, and synthetic fibre were responsible for about 80 per cent of the sector's profits, making 2.24 billion yuan (US$270 million), 2.22 billion yuan (US$267.4 million) and 1.88 billion yuan (US$226.5 million) respectively.
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