Textiles Maintaining Stable and Rapid Growth

Sun Huaibin, spokesman for the China National Textile and Apparel Council, indicates that the economic operations of the textile industry are likely to maintain stable and rapid growth this year. The output of largesized industrial enterprises is forecast to increase by over 20% to 250 billion yuan,

Economic operations increased stably during the first quarter. Although the growth in production dropped slightly, the increase in value addition and profits was better. The output of yarn, fabrics, printed/dyed fabrics, etc. of large-sized enterprises increased across the board with the exception of man-made fibers. However, the growths were 2 to 7 percentage smaller, affected by the elements of exports and fabrics.

Large-sized enterprises accomplished value addition of 130.76 billion yuan (up 21.7% from the year before), and gained net profits of 13.95 billion yuan (up 29.42%); the growths were 5 to 8 percentages higher than the whole industry.

Meanwhile, exports continued to increase at a stable rate with adjustments of the market structure. First-quarter exports of textiles and apparel rose by 22.16% over the same quarter of 2005 to US$27,988 million.

The stable shift of investments in fixed assets to West China was also more active. Investments in fixed assets of all industries during January-February grew by 37% from the year before to 12,275 million yuan. Industries that posted rapid growths in investments included apparel, textile machinery and silk. Capital asset investments amounted to 9,975 million yuan for East China (up 27.57%), 1,729 million yuan for Middle China (up 105.7%), and 571 million yuan for West China (up 97.1%).