The textile industry operated generally at a stable manner in the first quarter of this year and major economic indicators such as production, export, domestic sale, investment and profit maintained steady growth, said China National Textile and Apparel Council at a conference held on May 12 for analyzing the operation of textile industry in the first quarter.

In the first three months of this year, the production of main product categories registered single-digit growth. Figures of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show, the output of yarn, fabric, chemical fibers and garment grew respectively 6.32%, 2.55%, 4.79% and 3.04% year-on-year.

In the same period, the profit of above-scale enterprises grew further but at a slower pace. The NBS figures show that the textile industry generated total profit of CNY 66.69 billion in the first quarter, up 10.94% year-on-year, a growth rate that is 4.84 percentage points lower than whole-year figure of 2013; the sales profit rate stood at 4.65%, down 0.84 percentage points from 2013; the total assets turnover was 1.48 times/year, dropped moderately from last year; the management, accounting and marketing expenses accounted for 6.5% of total turnover, 0.31 percentage points higher than last year, indicating slightly increased operating cost.

In January-March of this year, the exports of textiles and garment further expanded but slowed down from last year. According to the General Administration of the Customs, China"s exports of textiles and garment amounted to near US$ 81.88 billion in the first quarter, up 2.18% year-on-year, 14.35 percentage points slower than 2013. The export to EU amounted to US$ 11.37 billion, up 10.01%, 9.52 percentage points faster than the average growth and 4.04 percentage points faster than the same period of last year; the export to ASEAN market amounted to US$ 7.41 billion, up 1.77% year-on-year, decelerated sharply by 26.57 percentage points compared with the 28.34-percent growth of last year. The share of Chinese-made textiles and garment kept shrinking on the US and Japanese markets.

The retail sales on domestic market increased further. According to the NBS, the retail sales of consumer goods grew 12.0% year-on-year to CNY 6.21 trillion, in which, the retail sales of consumer goods by enterprises above designated size totaled CNY 3.03 trillion, up 9.7%; the retail sales of clothing commodities amounted to 221.1 billion, up 9.0%, 3 percentage points slower than the total retail sales of consumer goods.

In the first quarter, investment of the textile industry continued to grow, but at slightly slower pace, the number of newly-commenced projects registered negative growth and the regional reallocation slowed down. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in the first quarter of 2014, the fixed assets investment of the textile industry climbed 12.76% to CNY 154.65 billion, 3.65 percentage points slower than a year ago; the number of newly-commenced project dropped by 8.02%, 23.41 percentage points slower than same period of last year. The investment in eastern regions grew faster than in central and western regions.

Experts attending the conference predicted that the economic operation of China"s textile industry will continue to face great challenges: production, domestic demand, export and investment will grow at a slower pace; the industry will face stronger competition on the world market and shrinking market share in EU, US and Japan; the export to ASEAN market will grow at sharply decelerated speed; price difference of cotton between home and abroad will remain unsolved.

Source: China Textile Leader Express