According to the recent custom statistics, China´s export and import of textile machinery totaled US$5.02 billion in the first 11 months of 2008, down 12.84% year-on-year, in which, the export value amounted to US$1.48 billion, up 6.32%, while the import value was US$3.54 billion, down 18.92% year-on-year.

China´s textile machinery export kept single digit growth. Knitting machinery were still the best sellers with the export value of US$ 447 million, up 10.96% and covering the share of 30.33% of the total. Nonwoven machinery showed the highest growth rate in export value with a year-on-year increase of 91.03%, followed by weaving machinery, growing 28.95% compared with the same period of 2007.

By ownership of enterprises, solely foreign-funded enterprises ranked the first place among exporters with export value of US$502 million, up only 0.08% and accounting for 34.03%.

India remained the main market for textile machinery imported from China. In Jan.-Nov., China exported US$ 296 million worth of textile machinery to India, growing 11.15%. On the basis of double-digit growth, the amount is predicated to exceed US$300 million by the end of year 2008.

The import value continued to grow but at a slower pace. Knitting machinery was the most requested machinery, registered import value of US$ 901 million, down 24.50% year-on-year but still taking up for 25.44% of the total. The country had a better appetite for nonwoven machinery and chemical machinery during this period. And still solely foreign-funded enterprises were the top importers as they bought from overseas US$1.16 billion worth of textile machinery, down 13.31%, accounting for 31.84% of the total import value.

Source: China Textile Leader