The textile industry is expected to maintain the same growth rate as in last year, a report released on February 7 by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said. It said the industry will continue to operate under pressure of weak demand, rising costs of raw materials and energy and tight monetary policy.

With the development of the national economy, the rising of urban residents´ income，the progress in urbanization and the implementation of various livelihood-related policies, the domestic demand for textiles and garment is expected to maintain steady and fast growth and the steady growth of domestic demand remains the main driving force for the development of textile industry.

However, the global economic environment is still full of uncertainties and the demand on the world market will remain weak, so it is hard for the textile industry to have a better performance in export and the export will maintain a slow growing pace.

The report also predicts that the cotton price difference will continue to exist; the costs of major production elements such as labor cost, environment protection cost and energy cost will continue to increase, and as the government poses higher requirements on environmental protection and energy-saving, enterprises will face higher cost pressure.

The report lists some major problems that the textile industry will face in 2013. It points out that since 2012, the demand on global market, especially the main markets of China´s textiles and garment export has been shrinking.

Big gap between local cotton price and international one is another important factor that will have influence on the operation of the textile industry. It has weakened the international competitiveness of Chinese-made cotton textile products. Due to weak demand, the cotton price on the world market has been declining since 2012, but at the same time, domestic cotton price maintained at a high level, with the gap between the two is about RMB 5,000/ton.

Since 2012, the labor cost kept increasing. 67.1% of the enterprises think that increasing labor cost is the prime factor that influences their benefits. In addition, Chinese textile producers are losing their international market share, while other Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam and Bangladesh gained increasing market share.

In 2012, the industrial value added of above-scale textile enterprises grew 10.5% year-on-year, down 0.2 percentage points; its share in the nation´s total stood at 5.6%, down 0.07 percentage points. The output of fabric stood at 66 billion meters, up 11.5% year-on-year, the production of chemical fibers 38.11 million tons, up 11.8% and garment 26.7 billion pieces, up 6.2%.

In 2012, the fixed-asset investment of the textile industry amounted to CNY 779.3 billion, up 14.6% year-on-year. The number of newly-commenced projects dropped 5.5%. The investment by cotton textile sector and printing & dyeing sector rose 12.5%, while the investment by chemical fiber sector increased by 20.3%.

In 2012, China´s export of textiles and garment totaled US$ 262.6 billion, up 3.3% year-on-year, the export price increased by 3.9%, and the export quantity dropped 0.6% after adjusted for price fluctuations.

In 2012, the prime business revenue of the textile industry amounted to CNY 5574.7 billion, up 10.7% year-on-year; the profit totaled CNY 294.3 billion, up 7.8%. 29.6% of the enterprises operated in deficit with their loss value increasing 47.0%.　

Source: China Textile Leader