Restrictions On Chinese Products Have Not Benefited South African Clothing Industry

2008/4/11 14:14:00 17

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Restricting Chinese Products Has Not Benefited South African Clothing Industry.

The study by the southern African Trade Law Center shows that South Africa has restricted imports of Chinese textiles for 15 months, and imports of Chinese products have fallen by 48% in the first year. However, the South African local garment industry, which had strongly appealed to restrict Chinese products, did not benefit from it.

Research has shown that the reason is that South African retailers are unable to get enough products from China, and then they go to Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and other countries, instead of taking care of local businesses.

In addition, due to the restrictions on the import of high quality fabrics abroad, South African clothing manufacturers are forced to adopt poor quality local products, and often fail to get the supply of goods in time.

40% of the products of South African clothing department store "foster" come from the processing of local manufacturers, but now many garment factories do not get enough cloth, and 60% of the cloth quality is not as good as before, and the delivery is not in time.

The chain said its clothing business has fallen by 30% to 40%.

Another garment retailer, Ed Kang, also admitted that its profits had lost 15%.

As early as the South African clothing industry and trade unions strongly called for restrictions on Chinese products, some local insiders pointed out that the low competitiveness of South African textile industry is the main reason for their crisis.

Today, South African enterprises are generally faced with difficulties such as rising costs, electricity shortages and cooling the consumer market.

According to the business daily, the Ministry of trade and industry of South Africa plans to extend the import restrictions on textiles, but Selwyn Igor, director of TFG clothing factory under Forsy, appeals to the Ministry of trade and industry to consider this matter carefully, otherwise more local processing enterprises will be affected.

//cn