During April of this year, the whole textile and apparel industry reports on a significant growth concerning incoming orders, turn-over and production; leading to promising results in the preliminary summary of this year in relation to the before mentioned factors.
The evaluations of the German Institute for Economic Research (ifo) concerning the business climate within these sectors show that the selfassessment of the actual situation as well as future anticipation have developed optimistically since January 2007.
Together, textiles and apparel industry reach a plus of 8.6% for the incoming orders in April 2007 compared to the previous month. In detail, textiles enjoyed an increase of 11% and apparel of 4.1%. The preliminary summary of 2007 has also improved by 1.9% to 2.4% in comparison to the figures of March 2007.
The textile sector registers a stable development of +4.8%, whereas the apparel sector is still below the value of the previous year (-0.4%). The turn-over also experienced a significant growth: The apparel industry completed the reported month with an extraordinary plus of 20.8%.
The textile industry, too, can be satisfied with a result of +8.9% compared to the same month of the previous year. The total turn-over for April rose by 13.2% leading to a plus of 4.4% in the preliminary summary of this year in comparison to 2006 (textiles + 3.6%, apparel +5.4%).
The positive development of the incoming orders pushed the production in April 2007, too. The German textile and apparel production grew by 9.9% (textiles +9.1% and apparel +12.2%). The textile sector apparently develops more steadily advancing
by a plus of 5.6% during the first four months of this year.
The apparel sector, on the other hand, consolidates its production by +1.0% during the same period in comparison to the last years’ value. Again, the number of employees decreased in both sectors during April 2007 as well as in the preliminary summary of 2007 compared to the year before. The number dropped by 2.3% in April 2007, and by 2.4% during the first four months of this year.
Because of a new law which is supposed to relieve the medium-sized businesses and which has been released on 01-01-07, only companies with at least 50 employees are still reporting. Therefore, these figures do not represent the total line of business anymore. Producer’s prices gained 0.6% in the textile industry and 0.2% in apparel.
Import and export improved by 9.7% and 18.4% during April of this year in relation to the figures of the previous year. During the first four months of 2007 imports achieved a plus of 7.3% and exports of 9.5%. This leads to a minor import-surplus of 1.5%.
