General Assembly of EURATEX presents the economic situation of textile industry for EU25 zone. 2007 has to be qualified as a stabilisation year following a somewhat more positive 2006.
Last year was characterised by a dichotomic evolution with the second half being far less positive than the beginning of the year. The industry:
• Recorded a positive trend for both production and turnover for the clothing industry while textiles stabilised and man made fibres dipped rapidly
• Consumption remained positive in the EU but stalled and decreased in the major overseas EU markets while emerging markets registered positive trends, but EU exporters faced difficult local market conditions to fully benefit from those evolutions
As during the last three calendar years we should stress that EU exporters have not been in a position to fully benefit from the positive developments of world demand due to unfavourable Euro/US dollar exchange rates and the continuing strong downward pressures on world prices.
2007 final consumption in the EU27 is estimated having increased by approximately +5% thanks mainly to the dynamism of the consumption of the new member states that more than compensate the slow down of the former EU-15 markets.
In 2007 part of the consumption increase may be attributed to a stabilisation of the consumer prices for clothing (+0%) – lower performance compared to 2005- 2006 years (respectively -0.9% and –0.6%).
Evidently this average figure masks divergent evolutions with a strong reduction in consumer prices in PL, LT, UK, DK, IE, CZ and CY while increasing very rapidly in BG, EE, GR, RO and SE.
Moreover during 2007 household textiles prices decreased less markedly than in 2006 (-0.1% instead of -0.8%) contrary to carpet prices who went up more strongly by +0.9% compared to +0.4% in 2006.
As a matter of consequence, retail sales in the EU 27 increased by +5.1% in value and by +4.7% in volume across 2007, the steepest increase of the last four years ….but the first indications for 2008 show that responding to a slowdown in economic activity, retail sales turned negative both in values and volumes. The dip in the growth rates are the continuation of the decrease started during the third quarter 2007.
