Textile exporters from Pakistan, Thailand, South Korea, Thailand, Philippines and Bangladesh are facing stiff competition from Chinese textile makers in the European Union textile market in the free trade era since beginning, this year.
Pakistan's textile export share eroded to 16.3 percent in the first eight months this year, indicate EU statistics. At the same time, Chinese exports jumped by whooping 40 percent.
On the other hand Asian textile exporters from South Korea, Thailand and Bangladesh, all faced cut in their share of the EU textile market by 28.6 percent, 15.1 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively.
For Burma and the Philippines, the situation was never so bad as their exports declined by whooping 54.4 percent and 41.4 percent in terms of value.
This clearly portends tough times for Asian textile exporting countries as China has unsurpassable advantage of cheap labor, modern infrastructure and mass production facilities that provide price advantage over other nations.
Surprisingly, even the textile exports from the group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations that are accorded special trade benefits by the EU, sank by 24 percent in value and 28.1 percent in volume terms.
The prediction, that EU market would be flooded with cheap clothing from China and other countries in the post textile quota era, which bothered some European textile, came out wrong.
Contrary to expectations, EU figures reveal that the total imports went up by 2.1 percent in value and 2 percent in volume terms. This proves China's sudden increase in clothing exports, with EU imports from the country shooting up 43.9 percent by value and 39.9 percent by volume in the first eight months.
